


The Righteous Man in the Shallow Grave

by bellatemple



Category: Bones (TV), Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-30
Updated: 2011-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-26 19:02:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellatemple/pseuds/bellatemple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When an unidentified body is found in an illegal grave in a field in Pontiac, Illinois, the body gets shipped to the Medico-Legal Lab at the Jeffersonian for identification, and Death calls Tessa in with a warning: "The righteous man has broken, and the angels have breached Hell's gates."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Righteous Man in the Shallow Grave

**Author's Note:**

> Grisly imagery, strong language, some nudity. Set season three for both series, post-”No Rest for the Wicked” and “The Pain in the Heart”. Written for the 2011 sncross_bigbang on LiveJournal.

  
**Chapter 1: The Grave**   


Ben's Chili Bowl in Washington DC was, as the sign proudly boasted, a city landmark. After fifty years of being in business it remained perpetually unchanged. In far more than fifty years of reaping souls, Tessa had never actually personally set foot inside its walls, even when the riots of the 1960s had torn up the whole neighborhood.

So when she appeared by the long counter amidst the late night clubbing crowd just before closing, she took a few moments to observe the atmosphere before turning to her boss. She understood mankind's sentimentality -- mostly, anyway, as much as someone who'd never been human could -- and fifty years was a long time, in human terms. But to her, the place looked like any other odd little restaurant, butcher shop, or deli her boss tended to favor. He liked them greasy. He liked them cheap. And he really liked them famous. Something about the inherent ego and self-importance seemed to amuse him.

"Tessa," he said, appearing on the stool at the counter next to her, a pile of food already arranged in front of him. "Have a half-smoke. They're named after that comedian who likes pudding."

"No," said Tessa. "Thank you." She looked around the restaurant again, eyes landing briefly on a shivery young woman in tight, shiny clothes buying herself a cup of vegetarian chili. The woman wasn't long for this world, but she wasn't exactly counting down the hours. "No one here is going to die, tonight. Why are we here?"

"Sit down," said Death, gesturing to the empty stool next to him. "I'd like to chat."

Death hadn't called her over to "chat" since she'd been possessed by Azazel and forced to let Dean Winchester live a little bit longer. It hadn't been pleasant, and Tessa wasn't looking forward to a repeat performance. Dean was properly dead now, though. She hadn't reaped him herself -- she preferred to stay well away from hunters these days, thanks so very much -- but there was no stopping word of his demise from circulating through the reaper community, especially in light of his brother's utter failure to bring him back. After four months, the reapers were just starting to feel settled again.

And now Death wanted to "chat".

"No offense sir," she said, careful to keep her tone respectful. "But I'd prefer to cut to the chase."

"Yes," said Death. "You've always been just a little bit impatient." Death set the remains of his chili dog aside and folded his hands. "We are here because something is shortly to happen. Something _large_." He looked Tessa in the eye, and she shivered like the girl in the shiny clothes. "Something disruptive."

That was never good. "How many?" Some of her fellows would be here if it was more than just a few. But disruptive events could quickly turn catastrophic.

"I don't know, yet," Death said. "In the short term, I suspect it will be few. Maybe a couple thousand. I've called you, specifically, because I suspect you'll have some interest in the matter." Death stood, leaving a few crumpled bills on the counter and straightening his jacket. "The righteous man has broken," he said. "And the angels have breached Hell's gates."

Tessa frowned. The righteous man only interested her in an academic sense. Unless. . . . "It isn't --"

Death nodded. Tessa resisted the urge to stomp her feet.

"Son of a bitch."

"Language, Tessa." Death cocked his head slightly. "Though I find I agree with sentiment."

Dean goddamn Winchester. He just wouldn't leave Death -- or his reapers -- alone.

There was no way that this would end well.

*

Kyle strode out toward the clearing in long, even steps, despite the thick undergrowth and the unwieldy surveying equipment bumping against his legs. He couldn't count the number of times he'd taken walks like this over the years -- or the number of assistants like Tim he'd had along for the ride.

"It's a damn shame," Tim called, tripping along behind him. "Gotta level all these woods."

"They'll put some of it back," Kyle said easily. "Places like this like to have some trees around."

"And how long'll it take 'em to grow back up?" Tim was beginning to pant. He was a young punk, fresh out of school with a degree in 'environmental engineering' or some such nonsense, who took the only job his experience-less ass could get. It was just Kyle's luck it happened to be with him and not data entry in an office somewhere.

"People gotta shop," he said. "Not like there's a whole lotta options for 'em on this end of town."

"People gotta breathe, first," Tim said. His footsteps paused, and Kyle looked back to find him leaning against one of the trees. Kid really should've looked for a desk job. "And we left 'this end of town' a couple miles back."

"If you build it," Kyle said. "Come on, kid. A few more yards."

Tim groaned, pushing himself upright, the tripod he was carrying looking like an off-center, stiff tail. He nodded and Kyle continued forward.

"Relax, kid. We're just checking things out, today. For all you know, there'll be an ancient tribal burial ground and the owners'll decide to sell it, anyway."

"Dude. If I get cursed, I'm so holding you responsible."

"Dug up a few of 'em in my time." Kyle looked back again with a grin, continuing toward the center of the field. "Nothing's gotten me yet." His left foot caught something rough in the grass, and as though Murphy himself was yakking it up, Kyle went over like a great, flailing tree.

Tim dropped the tripod and hurried forward. Kyle grunted and propped himself up on his elbows to see what he'd hit.

"Goddammit."

The cross lay on its side in the tall grass, half uprooted by some animal or storm so its planks formed a ragged X, not quite tall enough to be visible from the edge of the clearing. Looking closer, Kyle could just make out the outline of a rectangle stretching out from it, a patch about seven feet long more recently disturbed than the rest of the ground. Kyle lay right in the middle of it.

"Man, you gotta be more. . . ." Tim trailed off as he came closer, and Kyle watched as the blood drained from the kid's face as he sketched a cross of his own over his chest. "Is that. . . ?"

"Well." Kyle pushed himself up, dusting off his pants. "It's no ancient tribal burial ground."

"Oh my god." Tim fell back a step as though he worried whomever was resting beneath their feet would come bursting vengefully through the ground. "What -- what do we do?"

Kyle shrugged, frowning. "Contact the company. Go home and hope the boss'll pay us for the day."

"Shouldn't we -- do we call the police?"

"Someone probably will." Kyle ran a hand over his thinning hair. "Hope the boss'll pay us for tomorrow, too."

" _Dude,_ " Tim said, staring at him. "Someone's _dead_."

"It happens. It's a grave, kid. Not like we're looking at rotting bones on the ground."

Tim went paler. "You've seen that?"

"You stick in this job long enough, kid, you'll see most everything." Kyle shook his head down at the cross. "Like a state cremation was too good for you, you asshole."

"Dude," Tim said again. "He's _dead_."

"Doesn't mean he's not an asshole." Kyle looked over the clearing again and sighed. This would've been a decent gig, too. No local highways to choke the air, no protesters, just a big chunk of land needing a good chunk of time to get properly surveyed. And they hadn't even gotten half a day.

"Who the hell is that?" Tim asked. Kyle turned.

"What?"

"That." Tim pointed toward the woods on the far side of the clearing. "Nah, she's gone, now."

"She?"

"Some dark haired chick. Just, like, standing there, watching."

"Huh." Kyle shrugged. He'd never seen any surveyor fan girls, but he supposed they could exist. People were into anything these days. "Was she hot?"

Tim scowled. "You're a pig, you know that?"

Kyle sighed. "Shut up and get the gear back to the van, kid." If some dead guy was gonna keep him from an honest day's pay, he sure as hell wasn't going to put up with some punk ass's smart, judgmental mouth. "Then you can buy me a beer."

Tim glowered and started scooping up equipment. "Never shoulda left Portland."

And wasn't that the fucking truth.

*

"What are we looking at?" Booth swiped his passcard at the edge of the platform, clearing the steps in two short bounds, his suit jacket flaring out behind him. Bones looked up from where she was hunched with Hodgins over the main work table.

"Human remains," she said, her expression that mix of consternation and confusion that read "I'm a genius, so I can't tell if you're being deliberately obtuse." Booth got that expression _all the time_.

"Yeah, I can see that." Booth stepped up to the table and grimaced. "Gooey remains."

"Yes," said Bones. She took the skull between her gloved hands and gently pulled the mouth open. "Male," she said. "Late twenties to early thirties, approximately 1.85 meters in height. Likely a transient, judging by the inconsistent dental work, possibly from a young age."

Cam stepped onto the platform, giving Booth a smile. "He arrived this morning. Found in a shallow grave outside Pontiac, Illinois. No wallet, so the local PD requested our help in IDing him."

"Why didn't they tell me?" Booth spread his hands, tilting his head forward. He hated being left out of things. "They always tell me about the recent ones!"

"No foul play, no FBI." Cam pulled on her own pair of gloves. "Looks like this is a good old-fashioned animal attack."

"Ah, the good old days." Hodgins smirked, picking at the corpse like some kind of blond, bearded vulture. "When men were men and wolves were hungry."

"That's a myth," Bones said, moving down towards the corpse's chest. She picked up something long, metal, and pointy and prodded an exposed rib. "And we haven't determined the cause of death, yet."

"Guy's torso was shredded," Cam said. "That's usually going to be fatal."

Booth grimaced. "I swear, it's like you people enjoy this."

"Why are you here, Booth?" Bones glanced up again. "Do you have a case that takes precedence?"

"What, I can't just want to say 'hi'?"

"You can do that over the phone."

Booth shrugged. "Yeah, but I also wanted to tell you that the Bureau finalized things with Scotland Yard. I'm going to England with you." He grinned and spread his arms again, triumphantly this time, waiting for Bones to smile back. She didn't take her eyes off the corpse.

"That information can also be conveyed via phone. And they're more accurately referred to as the Metropolitan Police."

Booth leaned towards Hodgins, who'd stepped back with a tray of petri dishes. "Is she mad at me?"

"Mad at the world, man. Just like the rest of us."

Booth winced. It hadn't been too long since they'd closed the Gormogon case, and as much as Bones tried to pretend she was fine, he knew she was still reeling from Zack's confession. As Hodgins said, just like the rest of them.

"These wounds were definitely made by sharp, curved, bony weapons," Bones said.

"So, claws," said Cam. Bones nodded distractedly.

"That would be a logical conclusion. The pattern appears to be canine in nature."

"Aha!" Booth said. "So much for the kindness of wolves!"

Bones looked up and shook her head at him. Cam leaned in.

"Those marks are pretty wide spread for a wolf. I would have said bear."

"This is not a bear attack." Bones straightened and pointed to what looked to Booth to be just a mass of dead guy chest. "The scrapes are clearly arranged in sets of four, with the fifth set some distance back. The fifth claw on a bear is much closer to the other four." She leaned over again, rubbing a gloved thumb over a groove on the rib. "I agree with you on the depth and spread, though -- I won't know more until we're done cleaning the bones, but I'd say this is the work of a _very_ big dog."

"Like, Cujo big?" Hodgins asked, stepping back in with a fresh tray. "Or Clifford big?"

Bones looked at him. "I don't know what that means."

"They're big dogs," Booth said helpfully. Bones nodded, turning back to the corpse.

"Based on the distance between the claw marks, I'd estimate the animal's paw to be approximately 30 centimeters or more in diameter." She looked up from the body again. "That's the same as a large polar bear."

Cam whistled. "That is one hell of a dog." She prodded at the corpse. "There's not much left by way of tissue for me to look at. This guy must've been down there for awhile. I'd place time of death at more than a year ago."

Angela appeared behind her, notebook in hand, and made a face at the remains. "Ugh. Sorry, hon, I found a crumpled receipt in his pocket that says otherwise." She held up a baggie with a rather gooey looking piece of paper. "Dated April 30th, this year."

"Seriously?" Cam frowned. "This guy's almost completely skeletonized."

Hodgins shook his head. "Maggot activity agrees with Ang. Dude's no more than four months dead."

Bones looked up again. "I'm not seeing any evidence of scavenging, either peri- or post-mortem. Even without embalming, a body in a coffin shouldn't have deteriorated this much that quickly."

Hodgins shrugged. "The coffin wasn't much. It let in more creepy crawlies than a modern casket would have, but not enough to explain . . ." He gestured to the body as a whole. "This."

Cam straightened with a decisive nod. "I'll run a tox screen to see if there are any chemicals that could account for the rapid decomposition. Dr. Hodgins, you've got the clothes to check for particulates?"

Hodgins saluted. "I'm on it, Captain."

They split off, leaving Booth, Bones, and Angela behind with the remains. Angela looked them over again, the "ech" expression transforming into one of sympathy. "Poor guy."

"Very poor," Bones agreed. "Judging by the teeth and the bowing of the legs, I'd say he grew up well below the poverty line."

"That's not what I meant, sweetie." Angela sighed and pulled her notebook tighter to her chest. "The pine box, the rough cross. . . . They were both homemade. Whoever this guy is, someone out there's missing him, at least."

Bones looked over the corpse. "Then they should have chosen his burial site more carefully. I'm sure the plans for the new strip mall were lodged with the county records." She looked up at Angela. "Once we've identified him, we'll make sure his family finds him a better site for a memorial. I'll let you know when the skull's ready for a facial reconstruction."

Angela nodded, still looking at the corpse, probably already writing the tragic story of the John Doe in her head. Booth followed her gaze, then looked away quickly.

"Right. I'll just . . . go get some coffee."

Well, at least on this one they weren't going to have to chase down a serial killer. Just, as Cam had said, one hell of a dog.

*

Hodgins stared through the eyepiece of his microscope for what had to be the fifteenth time in half as many minutes, then looked up at his computer screens. The results hadn't changed. The insect he'd found nestled into the interior folds of the victim's clothing eluded identification in a way that was at once fascinating and infuriating. The fact that he didn't recognize it on sight was surprising, but not unprecedented -- he knew his bugs better than anyone else around, but the thousands of species he was familiar with wasn't even a drop in the bucket compared to the total number known by science in general. The fact that none of his usual resources had any record of anything remotely like it _was_ a surprise. It wasn't native to North America, as far as he could tell, but from Dr. Brennan's notes on the victim's skeletal structure and his own observations into the other particulate matter found on the corpse and the environment, John Doe hadn't spent any significant time overseas, either.

Normally, such a mystery would be exciting, but without Zack around to toss ideas and lord "King of the Lab" over, it almost didn't seem worth it.

Damn Zack. More than that, damn Gormogon, secret societies, and people canny enough to use a kid's pragmatism and logic against him. And damn Jack Hodgins for not seeing that something was up with his best goddamn friend.

Hodgins pushed back from his table and rubbed at his eyes, then picked up his notes on the other particulate matter. The mystery bug would have to wait. It was possible -- okay, only remotely possible, bugs were _important_ \-- that they'd figure this whole thing out without it, and in doing so, get the answers Hodgins wanted on who his new buggy friend was and what it meant. Lord knew the particulates themselves had turned out interesting. Cam would want an update on what he'd found so far.

He found her in Angela's office, both of them standing in front of one of the large monitors, their heads cocked to precisely the same angle. Hodgins took a moment to admire the view of Ang from behind before approaching, marveling once again at his luck in landing such a woman. Smart, wild, funny, empathetic, gorgeous -- pretty much the perfect woman, and just as soon as they got the man she'd married on a drunken adventure in Fiji to sign the divorce papers, totally his.

Angela tilted her head the other way. "He's pretty cute," she said. She looked over at Cam. "Don't you think?"

"Not my type." Cam leaned forward, revealing the edge of the computer-generated sketch Angela had done based on the victim's skull. "Does he look familiar, to you?"

"Kind of. Hopefully we'll get a match from one of the usual databases." She turned to her desktop keyboard to start the search, and flashed Hodgins a smile. He grinned back, but it turned to shock the moment she bent down, revealing the facial reconstruction in full.

"Holy. . . ." Hodgins came forward, his notes from the particulates almost completely forgotten. "Oh man, Booth is going to _hate_ this one."

Cam looked from the computerized portrait to Hodgins and back. "You recognize him, Dr. Hodgins?"

Hodgins glanced quickly at her, only to end up snapping his gaze right back to the image on the screen. "Are you kidding? That's Dean Winchester."

Cam's mouth dropped open, and she swung her head to stare at the picture again. "You're right. Booth _is_ going to hate this."

"Dean Winchester?" Angela straightened at her desk. "Why does that name sound familiar?"

Cam shook her head, her eyes wide. "He and his brother Sam topped the FBI's most wanted list for a year. First degree murder, fraud, grave desecration, those boys did it all."

"Yeah, if you want to believe the government-controlled media." Hodgins stepped forward, giving the portrait a closer look, unable to keep a grin from spreading across his face. "Eye witness accounts vary. Half of them insist that Dean and Sam Winchester were heroes, driving around the country saving people from killers and corrupt cops alike."

Cam narrowed her eyes at him. "More of your conspiracy theories, Dr. Hodgins?"

"Wait." Angela folded her arms over her chest. "Isn't this the guy who was, like, skinning women in St. Louis a couple years back? Not what I'd call a hero."

"Ah," Hodgins raised one finger. "But that guy was shot and killed on the scene. Booked, autopsied, and buried, all by the tender hands of St. Louis's finest. And get this, the bullet that killed him? Was made of silver."

"So that wasn't Dean Winchester."

"Just someone -- or something -- that looked exactly like him. A year later in Baltimore, he was taped stating it was a shapeshifter."

"Shot with a silver bullet." Angela shook her head. "Why couldn't this be a nice story of a poor, loved man who couldn't afford a proper burial?"

"Yeah, because our cases are ever that simple."

"It gets weirder," Cam said, tilting her head thoughtfully. "I'm pretty sure I remember hearing that Dean and his brother were killed when that jail exploded in Colorado last winter."

"So how'd he get from there to Pontiac, Illinois?"

Hodgins remembered his notes and held them up. "Particulates from inside his clothing show high concentrations of carbon, nitrates, aluminium phyllosilicates, calcium, sodium chloride, and ash."

Cam frowned. "So . . . he was dirty from the burial."

"Not the outside of his clothing. The _inside._ We already know whoever buried our vic changed his clothes first, which means this probably comes from the location of the animal attack. And it's not just any dirt. The calcium comes primarily from bone dust. Graveyard dirt."

"Graveyard dirt."

"Likely from a cemetery in the Mississippi Delta."

"Dean Winchester was known for grave desecration all over the country. He could have easily been killed in a cemetery in that area."

"True, but there's also iron dust, powdered herbs, manure, insect chitin --"

"Jack, sweetie," Angela interrupted. "Get to the point."

"I think it's a powder colloquially known as 'goofer dust'. Traditionally used in --"

"Voodoo rituals?" guessed Cam.

Hodgins nodded. "Such as those to bring back the dead."

"Oh you've got to be kidding me."

"It gets better." Well, they might not see it as better, but Hodgins was on a roll, here. "Swabs of the grooves in the victim's ribs show a high concentration of pure sulfur. In some spots so deep it's embedded in the bone."

Cam frowned. "What could cause that?"

"Only way I can think of is if the sulfur was covering the attacking animal's claws."

"So the dog was hanging around, what, a match factory?" Angela asked.

Hodgins shrugged. "Could be. Of course, sulfur is also known as brimstone."

Cam blinked. "Brimstone."

"Like you said, Dr. Saroyan." Hodgins rocked back on his heels. "It was one _hell_ of a dog."

*

Ruby paced across the motel room, a typically skeevy joint Sam had picked out, all exposed brick and tacky mirrors. She dreamed of the days she'd be able to talk him into getting something higher class. She wasn't a demanding demon, but something that didn't scream 'rents by the hour' would be nice.

Sam was out picking up food, as usual. It'd been awhile -- a small eternity, really -- but she was certain people didn't eat as much in her days as a human. Sam seemed to need to cram something into his mouth hourly, and they were nowhere near her talking him into cramming what she wanted him to in there. Not that Ruby didn't understand to a certain extent. She enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh in all their forms and always had. It'd marked her as an outcast even before she'd sold her soul so many centuries ago, and at the time they didn't even _have_ french fries. But just now, she needed Sam back here. The game had changed, and she needed to know what he wanted to do about it so she could make sure that he stayed on the crooked and narrow path to raising Lucifer.

There'd been a moment there, in the clearing, where she'd considered taking action. The surveyors had been nothing, just idiot men doing their idiot man-work, and it would have been simplicity itself to take them out. A disappearing survey team would have only delayed the development project for so long. It wouldn't matter once she had Sam completely under her thumb, but he was being stubborn. She'd delayed telling Sam about it while she thought it over, then decided the digging up of Dean's grave could work in her favor. Being the one to break the news would add to her "but I'm a _good_ demon" cred and with any luck by the time they got to Dean he'd be nothing but a stack of cleaned, cataloged bones and she could finally get Sam off the whole "must save my brother" thing. Besides, a change of scenery would do Sam a world of good. There were only so many demons she could talk into hanging out in the immediate Pontiac area, after all. Wherever Dean's mortal remains ended up was bound to be more interesting. It didn't much matter where he rotted. His soul was in Hell where it belonged, well on its way to becoming a halfway decent force for evil. "Righteous man" her ass.

The sound of footsteps approaching the room had her pacing faster, working to get her vessel's heart rate up to add to the frantic air she was cultivating. Keys jangled in the hallway and Ruby turned toward the door, wringing her hands like Lady MacBeth herself.

"Sam," she said as soon as the door opened. "Where have you been?"

Sam held up a greasy take-out bag. "Getting food. I told you." He frowned at her, looking her up and down. "What's with you?"

She rushed over to him, grabbing on to his upper arms. "Sam." She gasped artistically. The whole vengeful goody-two-shoes thing had worked well before Indiana and the hellhounds, but without Dean's over-developed sense of martyrdom around feeding Sam's desperation, she'd found that quietly worried and earnest held more sway. "I went to go check, just to make sure for you and there were these workers all around --" she cut herself off as though just realizing she was babbling when she decided Sam's brows had tilted up to just the right pitch of concern. She swallowed and got to the point. "They found Dean's grave."

Sam went white. "Ruby, are you --"

"They dug him up, Sam! They called the cops and brought out a _back-hoe_." She stopped again, looking up at him, her eyes wide and round. Sam pulled away from her and took up the track she'd been pacing for the last half an hour.

"Okay. Okay, calm down." He seemed to be speaking to himself as much as he was to her. "I've got his wallet and by now he --" He swallowed thickly, closing his eyes. "The body won't be -- recognizable. They'll just have to . . . rebury him. Right? They'll put him somewhere else and he'll be safe."

Ruby folded her hands against her chest and wondered if she was over-doing it. "Sam, they called in some kind of experts. They're shipping him off so they can identify him. To something called the Jeffersonian?"

Sam stopped pacing and turned to face her. "Who -- why would -- who the hell authorized that?!"

Ruby snorted, falling back just a bit into her old persona. "He's an illegally buried John Doe, Sam, they're gonna wanna know who the hell he is."

Sam shook his head and started pacing again. "We can't let that happen. They'll try to dissect him. I can't bring Dean back into a dissected body."

Okay, it was time to move this along a little faster. As much as she would have enjoyed pointing out that bringing Dean back into a _decayed_ body wasn't much different, Ruby wanted out of this motel more. "The Jeffersonian. Isn't that where that writer works? The one who writes the steamy mysteries about identifying bones?"

"Temperance Brennan." Sam caught on to what she was saying immediately. Her little demonic power-house was so smart, if so very, very gullible. "Brady -- one of my college friends -- he was really into her work. I always thought it was kind of . . . grisly."

"Because she carves up dead things to identify them." Ruby stepped in to give that big doe-eyed look again. "Sam, she's going to boil Dean into a skeleton and catalog his parts."

Sam shook his head harder, crumpling the to-go bag he still held tight in his fist. Ketchup started oozing out a tear in the side. "I can't let that happen." He looked down as the ketchup dripped onto his shoe, staring at it like he wasn't sure what was going on for a second before flinging the to-go bag across the room and reaching for his duffel. "We've got to get to DC."

Ruby indulged herself in a small smile while Sam's back was turned. Damn, she was good.

*

Booth stared at the face on Angela's screen, larger than life and staring back at him with what looked like a mocking smirk. Angela usually went for a smile on these, or at least a neutral expression; the mocking was pure Winchester.

"I hate this."

Angela and Hodgins shared a knowing glance. Booth crossed his arms.

"I don't understand," Bones said, looking from him to the image and back. "Dean Winchester was a killer. I thought you'd be pleased that he's no longer out in the world."

Booth rubbed his chin. "I'm glad he's not hurting people, Bones. But finding him like this?"

"Finding who?" Sweets walked in, baby face all squooshed up in confusion. Booth could see the exact moment he recognized their vic. The kid's eyebrows shot up, and he rushed over to look closer.

"Oh. Oh wow. This is the guy you're working on?"

"Yes," said Bones. "Booth hates him."

" _It_ ," Booth corrected. "I hate _it_. Not him."

"He's a serial killer," said Bones.

"Alleged." Hodgins rocked back on his heels. "Never convicted."

"That's true." Sweets looked like Booth's son Parker did when they went to the zoo. "The Winchester case is very complex. Obsessive, codependent personalities with delusions towards vigilantism. . . ."

"Yeah," Booth cut him off before he could go totally psychological fanboy on them all. "So I hate it."

Bones had that look on her face like Booth had just transformed into an odd little jigsaw puzzle. Hating this case had apparently stumped her -- but then, for her this probably seemed nice and clean-cut. Identity verified, cause of death found, body laid to rest. The end. "You mean because this will make it more difficult for you to prove his guilt."

"Or innocence," said Hodgins. He was like the polar opposite of Bones, a mess of buzzing energy. He thought something he believed was being affirmed here.

Booth didn't know what to think at all -- other than that this case was going to mess with his already reeling team and likely put them in danger. Cam would understand it. She looked at cases the way he did: like a cop. Booth wondered where she was hiding out just now.

"But you should know by now, Booth," Bones was saying. "It's entirely possible that I'll be able to determine at least some of the truth from the remains."

"I know, Bones. That's not what --"

"Hey," said Sweets, eyes still glued to the image, having apparently spaced out on the entire conversation so far. "If this is Dean, then where's Sam?"

Finally. "Exactly."

"The brother?" Bones looked to Hodgins and Angela, who shrugged and nodded, respectively.

"This guy was buried," said Angela. "His clothes were changed, he was put into a pine box and given a handmade marker."

Sweets turned away from the screen, drawn from the image of one dead alleged killer to the conversation about the other. "That was definitely Sam. No way did anyone else take care of Dean's remains. Sam wouldn't allow it."

"Which means he's still alive," said Booth. "And one of possibly the most successful serial killers of our time is still at large."

Sweets nodded, head bobbing like he was on a sugar rush. "At least he was four months ago. If he's out there now? He's gonna come looking for his brother. Sam and Dean were wicked close. Like, scary close."

Angela's brows shot up. "Like _Flowers in the Attic_ close?"

Bones frowned. "I don't know what --"

"You don't want to, sweetie."

"According to some of the sites I found," Hodgins said, "they totally were."

"And how many of those were serial killer fanfiction sites?" Angela asked. Hodgins shrugged.

"I don't remember seeing any evidence of it in the file," said Sweets. "But there's a lot we still don't know about them."

"And we don't need to," Booth said, a little desperate to turn the direction back away from that particular topic. "All we need to know is that odds are Sam's coming here."

Sweets looked from Bones to Hodgins, then shook his head. "No. Sam Winchester is smart. Maybe Medico-Legal smart."

"I find that unlikely," said Bones.

"He never had a single solid year at one school in his life," said Sweets. "And he got a full ride to Stanford. Anyway, he'll know we've figured out who we found. No way will he show up until he knows he can get Dean out without getting caught."

"But the guy that dug that grave isn't going to let Dean go into storage, somewhere," Angela pointed out. "He might be willing to take the chance."

Booth raised his hand, the other arm still crossed over his chest. "I don't think we can count on it, either way. And allegations or not, we _know_ Sam and Dean had weapons training. I going to get increased security for the building. And no one goes _anywhere_ without an armed escort."

Angela shivered and drew closer to Hodgins. Sweets nodded. Booth caught both movements from the corner of his eye. His full gaze was firmly on Bones. She wasn't exactly good at following those sorts of instructions.

Sure enough, Bones frowned. "Are you sure that's necessary, Booth? I have my gun in my office, if I need it."

Sweets beat Booth to the answer. "Dr. Brennan, think of how your father reacted to a threat to you and your brother. Everything I've read on Sam indicates that he'd respond the same way."

Bones frowned harder, apparently doing mental calculations, then nodded begrudgingly. "Fine. But I'm still carrying my gun."

"Wouldn't expect anything different." Booth clapped his hands. "Right, let's get back to work, then. Maybe we can keep a step ahead of this guy."

He watched the squints scatter, apprehension filling his gut. Another serial killer, so soon after Gormogon. Something told him that whatever they did, whatever precautions they took, they wouldn't be nearly enough. This case was going to throw them all over the wall, all over again.

He looked the facial reconstruction of Dean Winchester in the eye. "I hate this," he told him. "But if your brother crosses my people? He'll _wish_ Henricksen was still around to hound his ass."

*

Angela stayed in her office until late. The FBI database had confirmed the ID of the body, as well as the details of Dean and Sam's alleged deaths in Monument, Colorado. That information had all been easy enough to track down. The information Hodgins had about Dean and Sam's supposed activities before that had been harder. It would take time before the FBI allowed the Jeffersonian access to the Winchesters' official file, even with Booth expediting it all, and all the other reports had been buried in the archives of conspiracy and occult websites. Opinions on the Winchesters definitely varied. Angela wondered what the FBI made of the reports of Sam and Dean saving people from killer monsters.

She was just about ready to pack it in for the night when Cam brought her one more puzzle to solve. It seemed she'd found evidence of a tattoo on what remained of the flesh on the victim's chest, one not mentioned in the identifying details of Dean's file in the database. They didn't need it to help with the identification, but any extra bit of information on a case could prove helpful, so Angela stuck around, trying to reconstruct the pattern as the rest of the building emptied out.

It seemed to be some sort of tribal sun symbol. Angela ran a search on the basic pattern, and on a hunch the placement on the body, high on the chest above the victim's heart. She found a handful of possible matches, including one that was said to protect the bearer from demonic possession. Hodgins was going to have a field day with _that_.

Speaking of, Hodgins hadn't stopped by to ask when she wanted to head home, which meant odds were he'd be crouched at his work table over some case detail or other. Brennan was likely doing the same. Time for cooler heads -- or at least one without an assortment of PhD's -- to prevail. They wouldn't get far on identifying the animal that ripped Dean apart or the location of his no-longer-presumed-dead brother if they didn't get any sleep.

Sure enough, Hodgins was at his desk, rubbing his beard as he studied one of his monitors.

"I don't know about you," Angela said, coming up behind him. "But I would _really_ love to spend some time in a bed, tonight."

Hodgins grunted in vague agreement, the way he did when he was too wrapped up in a mystery to pay attention to what was happening around him. Angela sighed.

"Jack, sweetie. I was kind of hoping you might be in that bed with me."

"What?" Hodgins glanced up. "Oh, hey. Yeah. Just a minute." And his gaze went back to the monitor. Angela leaned in to see what had him so enraptured.

"Woah. I wouldn't want to meet that on a shadowy street corner." The image on the screen was a magnification of a monstrous -- and fortunately rather dead looking -- flea. "Or a brightly lit one."

"Yeah," Hodgins agreed. He tapped his keyboard and the image changed to another just as creepifying angle.

"Wait." Angela put her hands on her hips. "You're telling me that you, the bug, dirt, and slime guy, find this thing creepy?"

Hodgins shrugged. "Mostly baffling. I have no idea what it is."

"It looks like a flea."

"Except that it's three times the size of any recorded flea, with twice as many mandibles, and what looks like half-formed extra legs."

"A mutant flea?"

"A mutant flea covered in sulfur. It almost seems to be _made_ of sulfur."

"What are you saying here?"

Hodgins sighed. "If I didn't know better, I'd call it a 'hell-flea'."

"To go with your hellhound theory."

He raised a hand. "I know, I know. Dr. Brennan already yelled at me. But can you find a better explanation?"

Angela slumped down into the extra chair. "No. Brennan's doing her staring at the bones all night thing?"

"Yeah. She wants this thing solved as soon as possible."

"So do I. This?" Angela gestured towards the flea, then out over the lab, encompassing the entire case. "Another serial killer with strange, occult associations? It's the last thing any of us need right now."

Hodgins sat silently for a moment, then reached over to pull her into a hug. "I miss him, too."

Angela tilted her head onto his shoulder. "I know, sweetie." She leaned into him, content to stay right there for the time being.

A brownout sent the lights flickering. A buzzing sound tingled against Angela's ear drums, and Hodgins' computer monitor pixelated, then brightened until it whited out.

Hodgins smacked it. "What the hell?"

Angela sat up. The buzzing got louder. One of the lights above the forensic platform blew out in a shower of sparks. "Power surge?"

Hodgins shook his head, then pressed his hand to his ear. "The computers are on a protected circuit. What is that noise?!"

It was getting impossible to hear him over the rapidly growing, feedback-like buzz. She shook her head at him, then looked past him to the bone room, which seemed to have started to glow.

"Brennan!" She started up, but Hodgins grabbed her around the waist, pulling her down. She buried her head in his chest, feeling him do the same with her hair as the glow and the hum reached impossible levels and the entire world exploded.

It lasted only a moment, then everything went dark and quiet. Angela wondered if they were dead.

The emergency lights over the forensic platform flickered on, far fewer in number then they should have been. Hodgins' workspace had been knocked over. Million dollar pieces of equipment lay scattered in pieces. Hodgins peeked his head up over the table, one hand out to keep her back.

"Dr. Brennan," he said, and then he was on his feet, running for the bone room. Angela was quick to follow.

If Hodgins' work space was a mess, the bone room was a war zone. It looked as though not a single thing had survived whatever had happened, save the central light table where the bones were displayed when Brennan was working on a case.

"Holy --" Angela slapped a hand over her mouth. Hodgins echoed her sentiment.

Not a single thing but the light table and the figure on top of it, nude, well muscled, and unquestionably alive.

Dean Winchester offered her a weak grin.

*

Dean woke to darkness and dust, his whole body buzzing. He lay flat on his back on a hard, cold surface littered with tiny stinging shards. A blaring shriek split the air, vibrating against his skin and making the fine hairs along his arms and legs stand on end.

He gasped, then immediately choked as the dust swarmed up his nasal passages and down his already dry throat. He tried to roll over, but the shards beneath him scraped his hands, digging into his skin.

He breathed again, cautiously this time, and when he coughed, he fumbled one hand to his chest, thinking to pull his t-shirt over his nose. His hand encountered only skin speckled with sharp pebbles -- glass -- and a few larger fragments of what felt like shattered bone.

He was naked.

The air was cold, the darkness complete. A tomb, he thought, and then he remembered: Indiana. Ruby, then Lilith. The hellhound and the most unimaginable pain, tearing across his chest and thighs. His hand flew to his chest again, but aside from a few small cuts, his skin was unbroken. He breathed. He bled. And tombs didn't tend to have alarms.

Something flickered and then the room was filled with light, red and warm yellow and seemingly impossibly bright before his eyes adjusted and he realized they were emergency lights, bleeding through the doorway.

He was in a large room, minimally styled, on a high table at the center. It looked as if every pane of glass in the place had shattered, and the room had a _lot_ of glass. The table top beneath him was some sort of hard plastic, large enough and sturdy enough to hold a full grown man.

In essence, Dean had no idea where he was.

A gasp from the doorway drew his attention. He sat up with a grimace and the gasp repeated, this time followed by an abbreviated curse.

"Holy --"

A man and a woman stood in the doorway. The man, short and bearded, stood in front, his arms out as though to protect the woman at his back, though she was a few inches taller. The woman had her hand pressed to her mouth, her eyes wide. Her long brown hair was mussed, looking something like a halo in the glow of the lights behind her. Both of them wore blue lab coats, though the woman had taken the time to decorate hers, lining the lapels with brightly colored patterns.

She was _seriously_ hot, and Dean's hands shifted into his lap. He felt battered and exhausted, but lord knew that didn't always keep certain parts of his anatomy from rising to the occasion, and he got the feeling that this wasn't the time for that.

"Um," he said. "Hi."

The man's eyes widened further. "Oh my god." The woman clutched at his shoulder and shook her head, her other hand still pressed over her lips. The man said "oh my god" again. Neither seemed inclined to make any further move.

Dean licked his lips, racking his brain for some witty rejoinder, but kept silent when a second woman arrived, pushing her way past the couple filling the doorway. She was just as gorgeous as the first woman but in a more severe way. Her hair was pulled tight into a ponytail, and while the first woman stared in wide-eyed shock, her brows raised, this one's gaze was more annoyed, eyebrows lowered, though her eyes were no less round.

"What is going on here?" she demanded, surveying the damage. "What happened to my lab?"

"Dr. Brennan," the man started, then stopped and shook his head, mouth open. Dr. Brennan locked eyes with Dean, and her already scowling mouth pulled down even further.

"Uh," said Dean again. He fidgeted on the table, sending bits of glass cascading off to the tile floor. "Can, uh, someone get me some pants?"

**Chapter 2: The Evidence**

Tessa felt it happen.

She was in Indonesia, about as far as she could get from the ground zero of Dean Winchester's return without making it obvious she was hiding. She was reaping an old, sick man when it happened: the world around her _flexed_ , expanding like a rubber sheet and sending quivering ripples across the fabric of the universe itself.

It'd begun.

She finished up with the old man -- whatever Death might think of her patience, she was still a professional -- then shifted her focus westward. In a moment, she was standing in the parking lot of a large, grand campus of buildings, an area littered with domes and fountains, architectural elegance and modern efficiency -- sirens and humans in uniform and reapers.

Dean Winchester had not come quietly.

"What the hell happened to my extra security?" A man strode up, pale and tall and confident and so. Very. Young. He wore a dark suit and tie, his hair sticking up in the artful, swooping spikes that Tessa supposed must be in vogue, right now. His belt buckle said "cocky" and his socks were brightly striped. A man in black uniform and body armor stood at attention near a hastily erected line of yellow tape, a soldier saluting his commander.

"No word, yet."

The suit cursed, turning in place to stare at one of the buildings as another person, a dark-skinned woman wearing a black blazer pulled over jeans and a casual top, made her way over. "This is the part of being a cop that I don't miss, Seeley." She came to a stop next to the first man, narrowly missing walking straight through one of Tessa's fellow reapers. "What the hell happened?"

"Pull you from a hot date, Cam?" The man, Seeley, shook his head. "Some kind of explosion. Set off every alarm in the place. That's all we've got so far."

"Biohazard?" Cam stared at the building, biting her lip.

"That'd be one of the alarms, yeah." Seeley kicked at something on the asphalt. "Systems are all locked down. No one's been able to get in or out."

"Biohazard," Cam said again, nodding. "The lab'll be under automatic quarantine until the computers get the all-clear."

"Right." Seeley clapped his hands, then rubbed them together, turning back towards his soldiers. "You heard the lady. Let's 'all-clear', already!"

A soldier in glasses shook his head. "We can't, sir. Something's overloaded the mainframe. All the security systems are down."

Cam frowned. "What about the back-ups?"

Glasses gave her a sympathetic look. " _All_ the security systems are down."

"Then how the hell are we in automatic quarantine?" Seeley spread his arms out to either side, as though welcoming the world to answer his question, and Tessa leaned back to avoid getting a hand through her face. Glasses swallowed.

"They must have frozen in lock-down mode."

"Then go unfreeze them!"

"Seeley." Cam tried, but apparently Seeley was the sort who just liked to rant.

"What the hell good is a back-up system if it goes at the same time as the front-up?"

" _Seeley._ " Cam put a hand on his arm this time, getting his attention. "I'm sure they're already on it." She had a phone in her free hand and split her attention between Seeley and its screen. He followed her gaze.

"Was anyone still in there?"

Cam shook her head. "Without the security logs, it's hard to tell. A request went out to check in, but it looks like there's still a bunch of people who haven't responded." She took a breath, and a flicker of a wince crossed her face. "Including Hodgins, Angela . . . and Dr. Brennan."

"Bones is in there?" Seeley turned to start pacing, pulling his own phone out and dialing, then pressing it to his ear. "Of _course_ she is. She's always --" he cut off, pulling the phone away. "Straight to voicemail."

"Same with Hodgins. I'm trying Angela." Cam dialed, listened for a moment, then shook her head.

Seeley swore. "Dammit, Bones. If you're dead, I'm going to _kill_ you."

Tessa stepped away and looked up at the building, illuminated eerily in red and blue flashes. "She's not," she said, though she knew Seeley couldn't hear her.

The building was locked down, alright, and no one was going in or out, right now. Not even the reapers.

*

Brennan stared down at the blank screen of her phone. She pressed several buttons and when she got no response, she gave in to the urge to smack it and give it a few shakes. As she had hypothesized, the actions had no visible effect. "My phone's dead." She looked up, shooting the man on her lab table a hard look before glancing to Angela and Hodgins.

Angela held hers up, showing a similarly dark screen. "Mine, too."

"Dr. Hodgins?"

Hodgins shook his head. "Nada."

Brennan frowned. "It must have something to do with the explosion."

"I'd lend you mine," said the man on the table, and though Brennan of course knew he was still there, she couldn't help a slight reflex of surprise. "But I guess I left it in my other pants."

"Yeah," said Hodgins, folding his arms. "I've got your other pants on my work table, man. There's no phone in 'em."

Brennan frowned. "Why do you have this man's pants?"

Angela shot her a glance, then went back to staring at the man on the table. Like herself and Dr. Hodgins, she seemed reluctant to let him out of her sight. "It was a joke, honey."

"Was it?" Hodgins glanced back at her. Both of them were holding their shoulders high and tense, though Brennan was certain that, if she had to, she could subdue the man on the table. She'd observed Booth subduing suspects on any number of occasions.

"I take it," she said, looking back at the man, "that you're implying that this man is the same as the one whose remains we've been examining." She shook her head. "Then Angela's right. You have to be joking."

"Um," said the man on the table. "Either way? Still naked, here."

"I don't see what you want us to do about that. It was clearly your own misjudgement and none of our clothing would fit you."

"Also," Angela said, giving the man a stern look, though Brennan noted that she remained in the doorway, well out of his reach. "We don't give our clothing to serial killers."

"Alleged," said Hodgins. Brennan huffed.

"Dr. Hodgins, _please_."

Hodgins raised his hands. "Hey, I'm just sticking to the facts."

"Look at him, Tempe," Angela said, waving in the man's direction. "He looks _exactly_ like Dean Winchester."

"No," said Brennan. "He doesn't." Angela raised her eyebrows and Brennan went on. "I will admit that he's the same height and build as the skeleton and that he bears a marked resemblance to your reconstruction sketch --"

"It's not just marked," Hodgins said. "It's uncanny."

"He's even got the tattoo," said Angela. "That wasn't in any of the reports, but it's the same placement and angle and everything."

The man glanced down and poked himself in the pectoral, just next to the tattoo in question. "That's a relief," he said. Brennan chose to ignore him.

"Even if we assume that the completely skeletonized remains _could_ spontaneously regenerate epithelial, connective, muscle, and nerve tissue -- which is _completely_ irrational -- this man's skeletal structure bears none of the markers I noted in Dean Winchester's remains." Brennan stepped up next to the table, gingerly working her way around the bone shards she could see scattered about. Hodgins let out a squawk of protest, which she ignored. She grabbed hold of the man's left arm, avoiding the mass of keloidial scar tissue on his deltoid, and set her stance in case he struggled. He stared at her, shock apparent in the contraction of his levator palpebrae superioris muscles, but didn't resist. "The remains showed significant remodeling to the Coracoid process from what I surmise to be at least two gun shot wounds, approximately one year apart, the most recent occurring no more than four months prior to death. Even without the significant scarring one would expect to see, doing this --" she worked the man's arm up, down, and around, "-- would be incredibly painful." She looked closer at the keloid, noting the distinct and startlingly accurate hand print shape. "This brand is impressive," she noted. "I assume it bears some sort of tribal significance."

The man craned his neck to look over at his shoulder, his eyebrows drawing together as though he'd never seen the brand before, then turned his gaze from Brennan to Angela and Hodgins. "Is she for real?"

"No," said Hodgins. "She's entirely imaginary."

" _Further_ more," Brennan said, putting extra emphasis on the first two syllables as she shifted her grip from the man on the table's biceps to his wrist, filing the scar away in the back of her mind as a possible indicator of identity. "This man's phalanges show no indication of the multiple remodeled fractures I observed on the remains." She released the man and stepped back, looking him over. He wiggled his fingers, eyes still wide. "As a matter of fact, barring the bowing of the legs," which she did have to admit appeared to be very close to the bowing on the remains, possibly even a precise match, "I'd say this man's skeletal structure is in perfect condition."

The man shot her a weak-lipped leer. "Lady, I can't wait to see what you do on a second date."

Brennan scowled. She found this man exceedingly irritating, even setting aside the fact that he had somehow gotten past the Jeffersonian's guards, Booth's added security personnel, and the various check points and alarms in order to destroy her lab. "Which brings me back to my earlier questions." She grabbed his arm again, this time wrenching it up and around, behind his back, putting pressure on his glenohumeral joint. She had it on good authority that such a position was very painful. "Who are you, and what did you do to my lab?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me --" Brennan tried to think of a suitably obscene and intimidating insult. "-- Testicle-face!"

"Testicle-face?" said the man.

Hodgins took a step forward. "Dr. Brennan --"

Brennan wrenched the man's arm harder. The man gasped -- then moved far too quickly for Brennan to counter. He somehow twisted out of her hold, an act which must have nearly dislocated his shoulder, and spun her around, getting to his feet and pushing her away with the same movement. She slammed into the table, then turned to look where he'd gone, adrenaline pouring into her system and accelerating her heart rate and breathing in preparation for his next attack.

He stood at the far wall of the room, next to her very expensive -- and very broken -- standing display, bent at the waist in a defensive posture with his hands at shoulder level, fingers spread.

"Woah," said Angela. She and Hodgins had retreated once more to just the other side of the doorway. "Let's all just calm down, here."

"You broke into my lab," Brennan said.

The man snorted. "Naked?"

"Whatever floats your boat, man," said Hodgins.

Brennan was out of patience. "Who _are_ you?"

The man grinned. At any other time, Brennan supposed she might find the expression physically stimulating.

"Dean Winchester," he said. "Nice to meet you."

*

"Okay." Geier, one of the FBI's techs, came up while Booth was zipping up his hazmat suit. "We've got the main door to the building open and clear, but it'll take awhile before we can confirm presence of any hazardous materials." He whistled softly through his teeth. "Whatever happened in there, it's _not_ pretty."

Booth grimaced. He didn't like the mental image that was painting.

Cam, holding Booth's suit's helmet, looked like she felt the same. "Bodies?"

"None yet, but we haven't gone in very far." Geier shrugged. "We got the security team by the front entrance out. Looks like they were knocked out before it all went down."

Booth looked over to the waiting ambulances not far from the hazmat truck, but the angle was wrong for him to be able to make out much of what was happening over there. "Did we get anything from them? Like how the attacker got in?"

Geier shook his head. "One of them's awake, but he's not really in any shape to answer any questions yet."

Booth cursed under his breath and held out his hands for the hazmat helmet. Cam made a face as she handed it over.

"I really think you should be leaving this to the hazmat team, Booth. Or at least wait for back up to be ready."

Booth shook his head. "Three members of my team are in there."

"We don't know that." Booth gave her a look and Cam winced, but continued. "And they're my people too, you know. More than they are yours."

Booth gestured to the truck. "Then why aren't you putting on a suit?"

"Because I happen to know how dangerous a hazmat situation can be." Cam folded her arms over her chest. "There could be anything in there."

Booth secured the helmet over his head and switched on the internal lamp. "Which is why the _special agent_ is going in first." He held out his hand again. "Gun."

Cam sighed and handed his weapon over. Booth checked the magazine and held it carefully in both hands, turning toward the doors to the building. "Alright people!" He didn't turn to see the rest of the hazmat squad that would be following him in, his eyes glued to the door that would lead them to the lab. The suit's helmet made his voice bounce back oddly in his ears, putting him even more on edge. "Everyone stays behind me till I give the all clear!"

He heard a few calls of assent and started forward.

The hallway to the lab was still and eerie, lit sporadically by dim yellow emergency lights, the floor speckled with broken glass. Whatever explosive device had gone off had taken out almost every window on the first floor, but that was the only damage Booth could see. He felt his skin prickle and breathed slowly through his teeth. The closer he got to the door to the lab, the more the sense of _wrongness_ grew, as though the air itself was thickening around him. Whatever had happened here, it wasn't something any of the FBI's technicians or agents had seen before. And Bones was likely right smack in the middle of it.

Not that that was much of a surprise. Bones had a talent for ending up right in the middle of things.

Booth slowed as they approached the double glass doors leading to the lab. Like all the windows, the doors where shattered, only the frames remaining, still locked together by the automatic security system. Booth pressed himself against the wall next to the doors, leaning his head back to listen. The hazmat suit muffled everything, but he could make out the sound of voices under the shrill cry of the alarm.

"Angela." That sounded like Bones. Booth felt himself relax incrementally. "Go get my gun." And that tensed him right back up.

"What?" Angela sounded as unhappy with the idea of Bones needing her gun as Booth did.

"It's in my office, in the top drawer of my desk. I'd get it myself, but I have to be ready to restrain him if he tries anything."

"It's an obstacle course out there. I'm not sure Angela could even get to your office." That was Hodgins, which meant all three of Booth's missing team members were conscious and speaking. He glanced back at the rest of the hazmat team and raised his hand, signalling them to keep back, then edged his way through the frame of the door.

The lab was in ruins. Tables were overturned and the floor was covered with broken equipment and a fine coating of tempered safety glass. Some sort of force had swept through from the back of the lab towards the doors, but Booth couldn't see any evidence of burning. The explosive techs were going to have a field day with this one.

Stepping carefully so as not to make too much noise, Booth made his way through the lab towards the back. He could just make out the forms of Angela and Hodgins standing in the doorway to the bone room, which seemed to be the center of the explosion. That'd be where Bones was, along with whatever man she was talking about restraining. Booth stepped up his pace, dropping the attempt at stealth in favor of getting to the room with his gun before Bones did anything stupid. His foot knocked aside a metal canister, and Angela and Hodgins both startled, then turned to look.

"Booth!" Angela smiled, her shoulders slumping. "Thank god."

"Booth?" Bones called. Booth heard a grunt, followed by cursing in a gravely male voice. "Booth, in here! I have a suspect in custody!"

"Dammit, Bones." Booth hurried over, gun still held at the ready. Angela grabbed Hodgins' arm and pulled him out of the way with her as Booth reached the door. He swung in, leading with his gun, and swept the room before centering on where Bones stood over a kneeling man, pinning him down with an armlock.

Booth stopped, straightening. "Okay, why is this guy naked?"

"No idea, man." Hodgins was back in the doorway, Angela still hovering behind him. "We found him like that."

The man kneeling peered up at Booth, making no move to break out of the armlock. "Why are you in a spacesuit?"

"Hey." Booth stepped forward, lowering his gun slightly and wishing he'd thought to secure his cuffs to the hazmat suit. "You're not asking the questions here, buddy." The man smirked tiredly at him and Booth frowned. "Wait, is this --"

"He claims to be Dean Winchester," Bones said. She wrenched the man's arm up higher, almost vengefully. "He destroyed my lab."

"We don't technically know that," Hodgins said. "It's not like we've caught him red handed."

"Not helping, Hodgins." Booth scanned the room again, half turning to shoot a glance back towards the door. "Anyone else suspicious?"

Angela shook her head. "I think we're the only ones here."

Booth nodded. "There's a hazmat team in the hall. Let them know we're clear." Booth scowled at the naked man under Bones' grip. "And tell them to bring this guy some pants, would you?"

The man rolled his eyes. "Finally."

"You be quiet." Booth had to know. " _Why_ are you naked?"

"How should I know? I've been asking for pants for the last ten minutes."

"That's true," said Bones.

Booth rolled his eyes. "Why didn't one of you lend him a lab coat?"

"Angela said we don't lend clothes to serial killers."

"Alleged," said Hodgins. The man shot him a nod.

"There are a great many cultures for whom nudity is not a taboo." Bones fell into lecture-mode, as though she weren't currently keeping a naked man pinned to a glass- and dust-covered floor.

"Yeah, well." Booth patted down the side of his suit, looking for a good spot to tuck his gun so he could take over control of the prisoner from her. "This is America. We don't have nudists, here."

"That's not true," said Bones. "There are recreational nudist retreats in more than half of the fifty states. The American Association for Nude Recreation has around 50,000 members --"

Booth held up a hand. "Okay, yeah, fine, but we don't have that _here_ , in this lab, do we?" He finally gave in with a small wince and handed Bones his gun after making sure the safety was on. She stepped back, training it on the man, and Booth stepped in to take hold of the man's arm. "Alright, then. Dean Winchester. You're coming with me."

"Dean Winchester's dead," Bones noted.

"Yeah, we've thought that before."

"And they say third time's a charm," Hodgins said. Booth noted he was still keeping well back from the man himself. At least he had some sense of self-preservation, even if he didn't know when to keep his mouth shut.

"I like that guy." The man twitched in Booth's grip as he was pulled to his feet, though Booth could tell he wasn't using his full strength. "Shouldn't you be showing me a badge or something?"

"I'll let you take a good long look once we get outside." Booth tugged harder on his arm, then paused as the man winced. For all his time in the army and on the job, he still hated it when someone got injured. Even an _alleged_ killer like Dean Winchester. "Angela! Tell them to bring shoes!"

"Got it!" Angela called back. She reappeared a moment later with a spare hazmat suit. "I think this will fit him. They're looking for a spare pair of boots. We can't leave until they finish testing for biohazards, anyway."

Bones was apparently still stuck on the identity question. "Before, we didn't have a positive identification of Dean Winchester's remains in the Jeffersonian."

"Is that what this place is?" The man -- who really looked a hell of a lot like Dean Winchester, dammit -- looked around the lab consideringly. "That would explain the stockpile of bones."

"Like you don't know." Booth steered him towards the lab table, the only unbroken and un-broken-glass-covered surface around. "Sit down."

The man sat, raising his hands in surrender as he shrugged out of Booth's grip. "Look, I don't, okay? I have no idea what happened here. I just . . . woke up."

Booth frowned. He knew from the files that Dean was an accomplished liar, but something about the tone of his voice and the look on his face -- and the fact that the guy was naked -- made Booth want to believe him.

"So, what, this is some fraternity prank gone awry?"

The man smiled roguishly and shrugged, then abruptly dropped the cute act. "Yeah, okay, probably not. But seriously, man, you can check the place for fingerprints or . . . footprints or whatever. I'm willing to bet you won't find a trace of me anywhere but in this room."

Booth leaned in, staring him hard in the eye. "Trust me, we'll do that. But you're still coming with me."

The man's shoulders slumped. "Yeah, I kinda figured."

*

It was a thirteen and a half hour drive from Pontiac, Illinois to Washington, DC. Sam decided to do the whole drive in one shot. Ruby tried to convince him that he wouldn't do Dean any good if he got to the Jeffersonian all exhausted, but Sam wouldn't hear it. It was close to two in the morning by the time they reached the outskirts of the city, and Sam still insisted on going straight to the museum's offices. Ruby wasn't looking forward to busting him out of whatever cell he ended up in when he got caught, but capitulated easily enough. She had to make Sam think she was as interested in getting Dean's remains -- and Dean -- back as he was.

They spotted the flashing lights from a block away. Sam circled around three times before they found a space from which they could watch the action without being spotted. Sure, it was a no parking zone, but Ruby was pretty sure no one would come by to give them a ticket. It looked like every emergency vehicle in the district was already outside the Jeffersonian.

Sam leaned forward in his seat, hands tight around the Impala's wheel. "What the hell?"

Ruby shrugged, her own hands clenched into fists. There was something in the air here that set her teeth on edge and made her want to get as far away as possible. Something really strange was going on here, far more than just Dean's rotted body getting shipped off to get picked over by some scientists. Something big enough to fill the Jeffersonian's parking lot with ambulances, cop cars, fire engines, and what looked like it might be a hazmat truck. She leaned back in her seat, ducking her chin down to her chest. "We should go. Sam, turn around. We can watch the news and then come back tomorrow."

Sam shook his head, his eyes glued to the building. "No way. Dean's in there, Ruby, I know it. I've almost found a way to save him. I can't lose him, now."

Ruby bit her lip. That'd been a sticking point in their relationship over the past few months, ever since she'd gotten him sobered up. Drunken Sam had been -- well, not _okay_ , really, but at least more content with the fact that Dean really couldn't be saved. But the driving ambition to increase his power until he could storm the gates of Hell itself was one of the few things keeping Sam from reaching for another bottle, and if it played into Ruby's plans for him, she couldn't really complain.

It was _really_ irritating, though.

"Hang on." Ruby sat forward again. "There's people coming out." She squinted through the windshield, trying to see past the flashing lights. Beside her, Sam reached into the back seat, pulling out a large, battered pair of binoculars. Ruby made a face as he held them up to his eyes. "Hey, you got another pair of those?"

"No," said Sam. He shrugged without looking at her. "Sorry."

Ruby huffed and stared back through the windshield. She could make out a line of people, mostly wearing hazmat suits, making their way out of the building. A few dressed in dark lab clothes formed the tail end of the line, lead by two men about the same height and build, one frog-marching the other towards the waiting police vans. To her left, Sam scanned the line, then let out an explosive curse. He threw the car back into gear before Ruby could work out what he'd seen and tossed the binoculars at her as he twisted in his seat to start pulling out of their space. Ruby squawked in surprise, then grabbed the binoculars and looked through them.

The man being frog-marched was wearing a hazmat suit, but no helmet. As he passed out of the shadow of a fire truck, she got a good look at his face and let out a curse of her own.

If her eyes were to be believed, Dean was alive and well, and currently in the custody of the FBI. She watched as the agent manhandled him into the waiting van, then lost sight of the whole scene when Sam pulled them back into the minimal traffic. When they could no longer make out any of the flashing lights, she rounded on him.

"What the hell, Sam?!"

Sam's jaw was set angrily. "I don't know."

"Like hell! Did you make a deal without telling me? Did someone offer you a deal?!"

Sam thumped his hand down on the wheel, running right through a yellow light and nearly pulling the wrong way around a traffic circle. "Of course not. None of the crossroads demons will bargain with me, you know that. It must be something else. A revenant or a shifter or something."

Ruby shook her head, remembering the terrible foreboding she'd felt when they first arrived on the scene. That sure as hell hadn't been any revenant. "A shifter needs a living model to create that specific of a form, Sam."

"A demon then? Or a zombie?"

"He didn't look real undead to me."

Sam swung them around corner after corner until they reached one of the larger roads, then pulled out his phone. "Here, use the GPS and try to find us a motel. Something not too nearby. The FBI knows about the Impala."

"Then why didn't you let me drive?" Ruby huffed and started poking at his phone, trying to work out how the GPS system on it worked. "Sam, what are we going to do?"

"We're going to find out what the hell is impersonating my brother and we're going to kill it."

Ruby swallowed. She really didn't want to bring up what had sprung to mind -- she didn't even want to think about it as a possibility -- but she and Sam were at a crucial point. She had to make sure he didn't think he had any reason not to trust her, and that meant playing devil's advocate sometimes, even when it wouldn't immediately work in her favor. "Sam, what if that's really him?" She glanced over. "Something was _wrong_ with that building. What if someone else brought Dean -- the real Dean -- back?"

Sam glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "What are you saying?"

"Something happened there. Something powerful. Maybe more powerful than anything I've seen before. Sam, this could be really big. And really, really dangerous."

Sam's eyes went wide and Ruby watched as a range of emotions crossed his face: shock, denial, disappointment, shame, more shock, and then anger and determination. His jaw set and he lowered his chin, practically glaring down the road. "Then we'll find out what it is. We'll get Dean back. And then we'll kill it." He tilted his head, then swung down another road. "I'm going to need some practice," he said. He glanced over again, this time turning his head to catch her full gaze for a moment. "Can you find me some demons?"

Ruby smiled, reaching out to pat his arm. Maybe Dean was back or maybe something decided to take his form to mess with people. Either way, Ruby could see this working out _very_ well for her plans. "Of course, Sam. I'll give you any help you need."

*

Dean lay back on the cot in the holding cell, staring at the ceiling. He'd gotten the feeling as he was being loaded into the police van at the museum that the FBI agent would have liked to put him straight into an interrogation room, but the others on the scene had nixed the idea. Something about getting a chance to rest up and gather more information. So Dean was moved to the local jail, given a jumpsuit to replace the plastic hazmat one they'd loaned him in the lab, and thrown into a cell for the night.

They'd given him a phone call when he'd insisted that he should get one, but Sam's number had been disconnected. He'd lucked into a sympathetic guard, who'd offered to let him try one more number -- and Bobby had hung up on him. Honestly, Dean could hardly blame the man. The last thing he remembered was being used as a chew toy by a hellhound. That wasn't the sort of thing that one expected a person to survive.

The calender on the wall of the office where they'd fingerprinted him had said September. It was the only hint Dean had as to how much time he was missing. Four months. Four months he'd apparently spent at the tender mercies of Hell and he had nothing to remember it by except a vague sense of unease and flashes of darkness, blood, and pain every time he closed his eyes.

While he was glad enough not to be subjected to an endless line of questions he had no idea how to answer without getting thrown into a loony bin, he almost wished the FBI agent _had_ taken him right to interrogation. At least with other people around, it was easier for him to ignore those flashes. To ignore the fact that he was entirely on his own for perhaps the first time in his life, without Bobby's gruff expertise to call on, without any idea where Sam might be or what he'd done to bring Dean back, without even the knowledge of his dad out there somewhere, roaming the country and ignoring Dean's calls.

God, but he missed his dad. He'd missed him the moment Sam had come into his hospital room, seemingly so long ago, and told him that Dad had collapsed, and had continued to miss him every moment after. But that ache returned a hundred fold now as Dean lay in a dark cell, surrounded by people who hated him on principle, with no idea how to get out or if he would have anything to run to even if he did escape.

What had Sam done? Was he okay? Had he traded himself for Dean, the same way Dean had traded himself for Sam? Was his brother in Hell now, in his place? Or did he have a ticking clock hanging over his head, like Dean had had all last year? At the moment, it seemed like Dean would never know. He was a wanted fugitive, in FBI custody, found in a decimated laboratory, with no other obvious suspects around and no explanation for what had happened or how he'd gotten there. Not one they'd believe, at least. There'd be no Deacon around this time to help facilitate his escape. No sympathetic public defender to talk into getting him the information he needed. And -- hopefully -- no ghosts or armies of demons storming the building to prove what Dean claimed was the truth. At best, Dean figured he could look forward to spending the rest of his life in prison, getting his ass kicked by guards and giant prisoners named with ironic nicknames. At worst, well. It wouldn't be the first time a demon possessed a member of the FBI. Dean could easily "disappear", and probably get sent right back to Hell.

He rolled over onto his side on the cot, pulling his knees up. He hadn't felt this hopeless since he'd sat vigil by the side of Sam's corpse in Cold Oak. At least then he'd known he had a way out. A crappy one filled with pain and guilt, but one that left him knowing that at least his brother would be alive.

Dean was wallowing. He knew he had to get up, had to start thinking about what he was going to say to the FBI, how he would try to explain away the damage to the lab. It'd be no use trying to deny who he was, even if he hadn't admitted it outright to the scientists who'd found him. They had his fingerprints on record, had mug shots from Arkansas. It wasn't the first time they'd seen him "come back from the dead" either, even if it was the first time Dean actually remembered doing so. There was no point in trying to convince them of the truth, but there had to be some story he could spin, some emotional response he could trigger to get them on his side, at least long enough for him to find someone who could actually help. Bobby's list of contacts was a mile long -- surely one of them must have some sort of lawyerly credentials.

But that lab was going to screw him. Dean didn't trust the FBI to actually conduct a thorough investigation. They had a scapegoat already locked up, they'd have no need to look any further. And Dean didn't have any idea what could have actually done that kind of damage. If Sam had made a deal to bring him back, whatever demon he'd made it with had some _serious_ mojo and was probably laughing himself sick at the fact that Dean got the blame for it. He really, really hoped that Sam hadn't made a deal, would have thought his brother was smarter than that, stronger, but he couldn't see any other way that he wasn't a mess of chewed flesh and damned soul.

His thoughts kept going around and around. He'd never been good at inactivity. He wished he could sleep, but was terrified of the dreams he was certain he would have. The last thing he wanted was to remember Hell, but the memories seemed to be lurking just at the edge of his conscious mind, hulking and terrible.

He was so distracted by his thoughts and fears that he didn't notice the rising sound filling the cell until it was already loud enough to hurt.

There was light, too. A harsh and sourceless white light like a magnesium flare surrounded him on all sides, wiping out the shadows of the cell. Dean pushed himself up from the cot, staggering away from it and looking around, trying to figure out what was going on. The light spilled out through the barred door, marking thick lines along the floor of the hallway outside. Dean clapped his hands over his ears as the noise grew, but it seemed to move right through his palms, rattling his whole skull and making his joints ache. He hissed and sank to the floor, eyes squeezed shut, and wondered if this whole thing wasn't Hell after all, some cruel, creative joke the demons liked to play when they got tired of ripping people's skin off. He was just reaching the point of hoping he'd pass out before his head exploded when the sound of guards shouting in the distance penetrated the feedback-like buzz. He curled up on the floor, arms wrapped tightly around his head, and caught a glimpse of a guard throwing up an arm as he approached the cell, before the light and sound cut out abruptly, and Dean dropped into blessed, silent darkness.

*

Hodgins stepped carefully over the overturned mass spectrometer than had once sat next to his work table and winced inwardly. The Jeffersonian had the whole lab well insured, so the cost of replacing the thing wasn't much of a worry -- even if it weren't insured, the Cantilever Group had more than enough funds to rebuild the place from the ground up, though talking the board into doing it would have been interesting. Still, that single piece of equipment could run a good five figures, used, and it would be awhile before the FBI tech team got the place cleared enough to even bring insurance adjusters in, let alone start the process of getting everything replaced. The Medico-Legal lab was going to be crippled for at least the next month.

Maybe he and Angela could take a break. Head down to No Name Key themselves and talk Birimbau into signing the divorce papers, then tool around the Caribbean until the lab was back in order. Lord knew they needed it. He'd been considering asking her if she wanted to go since Zack was arrested, but the siren call of science, of catching other killers and preventing them from doing to others what they'd done to his best friend had been too strong. Dean Winchester had forced their hand, now. Maybe it was a blessing. Maybe Hodgins could turn this into something positive for him and Angela, at least. Let someone else catch serial killers for awhile.

Hodgins pushed those thoughts aside as he made his way over to where the FBI's team was working, taking measurements on the blast radius and swabbing surfaces for particulates. Officially, he wasn't supposed to be helping out with the investigation -- Caroline had ranted for a good five minutes about conflicts of interest and hadn't he learned his lesson the last time? -- but he'd made his way past the police tape with talk of checking on his office, making sure his slime molds and beetles hadn't been adversely affected in the blast. None of the FBI's team wanted to get near any of that. As long as he promised not to actually touch anything that wasn't directly slime- or bug-related, they were willing to let him observe.

"You guys found anything yet?"

One of the agents looked up from the pile of glass she was examining and frowned at him. "Doctor Hodgins," she said. "What are you doing in here?"

"Agent Frost." Hodgins tried for a smile and hoped she wouldn't try to get him kicked out. They hadn't parted on the best terms when they'd worked together on the June Harris case. "Just checking on my slime. Got curious."

Frost huffed, then turned back to her work. "Well. I'll admit, I'm curious, too. Judging by the directionality of the blast, the explosion initiated from the table in the bone room, yet it's the only piece of furniture or equipment in the area that's been left undamaged. And we haven't been able to find anything to suggest what sort of incendiary device was used." She turned to look over the ruins of the lab, her frown going from annoyed to intrigued. "Frankly, I've never seen anything like it."

Hodgins frowned as well, following her gaze. "You haven't found _any_ residue?"

"And I haven't even thrown out any air filters."

Hodgins snorted, glad she didn't seem to be harboring any hard feelings. "Good to know. What about the security guards? Any idea what knocked them out?"

"Sorry," she said. "Not my field. The security office is outside the blast radius. It wasn't the same device that took them out."

Hodgins turned until he was facing the front entrance of the lab, taking in the layout of the rubble. He couldn't tell anything more just by looking than what Frost had just told him. If Zack were here, he'd be running the calculations to determine force and directionality in his head, and already compiling a list of chemical reactions that could create such an effect. But Zack wasn't here, and it wasn't likely he ever would be again. He pushed the thought aside, determined to refocus on the present. "And here I was hoping there'd be some part of this case that _wasn't_ bizarre."

"I can't help you there." Frost gave him a searching look. "Is it true that the suspect was found naked?"

"As a jaybird." Hodgins decided against going into his half-baked theory about how that had happened. Still, the evidence was piling up a little too high. They'd had remains they'd been certain belonged to Dean Winchester, complete with a signed receipt -- okay, signed "D. Hasselhoff", but it wasn't exactly unheard of for Dean to use an alias like that -- and then, the same time the remains disappeared, possibly even the exact moment, a baffled-looking, naked Dean Winchester appeared, right in the center of a blast none of them could yet explain. Combine that with perimortem wounds from an animal they couldn't positively identify, what appeared to be a completely new subspecies of giant flea found on the victim's clothing, the massive amounts of sulfur, the evidence of voodoo involvement and the claims from across the country that the Winchester brothers were heroes taking down unexplainable, murderous creatures. . . . Well, it was the ghost of Maggie Cinders all over again. At least the pieces there added up -- a student film, a mess of hallucinogens, and a deeply disturbed older brother leading straight into murder.

Of course, then there was that figure he and Angela had spotted in the last bit of recovered video. Moonlight on fog, they'd decided, but Hodgins couldn't help but wonder.

And this. Was this another case of moonlight and fog, the mind finding patterns where patterns didn't exist? Hodgins' scientist side -- which these days tended to sound a lot like Dr. Brennan -- was saying yes, of course, it had to be. He was a fool for even questioning it. But the other side, the one that followed conspiracy theories and hopped up and down like a little boy when there might be pirates to be found, that side kept pointing at all the bits and pieces and insisting "but what if it's true?"

Well, there was one part he could put to rest easily enough. He turned toward the bone room and gave Frost a hopeful look. "Hey, mind if I take a quick look, here? Everything was so confused last night, I want to see what it looks like in daylight."

That earned him another frown, this time accompanied by a pointing finger. "Don't touch anything."

"Please." Hodgins pressed a hand to his chest. "I'm a professional."

Frost eyed him suspiciously, but nodded. "We've finished up in there, anyway. You've got three minutes."

Hodgins gave her his best innocent smile. "That's plenty. Thanks." He slipped into the room before she could change her mind. It was empty, save for Hodgins and the scattering of glass and bone left by the blast. The light table stood proud, front and center. As Frost had said, the damage all seemed to radiate out from it -- the force in this room had been great enough to break the fronts off the plastic bone storage bins that lined the walls. Dr. Brennan was incredibly lucky to have been out of the room when everything went down, though Hodgins wondered if luck were really involved at all. No one had really been injured, last night, not even the security guards who'd been knocked unconscious.

He spotted a few darker spots on the floor and crouched down. Almost no one, anyway. Dean's feet had been cut a few times by the glass, which meant tiny amounts of blood were left behind on the floor. He dug into his pocket for one of the baggies he kept on hand when he was working, then carefully scooped up a few bloodied glass pebbles and zipped the bag shut. He hoped it'd be enough. They'd managed to get a DNA work-up on trace evidence before, but that was when Cam was working with the Jeffersonian's top-of-the-line equipment. He'd have to outsource this one to another lab. Dean hadn't bled that much, and Hodgins ran the risk of getting caught if he took too much from the floor, here. They weren't going to get a second chance to run the tests.

He wrapped the baggie in a few tissues to add a buffer zone between his clothes and the plastic-wrapped glass, then slid it back into his pocket. There was plenty of organic material left on the clothing that'd been found with the remains. He could send that and the blood traces off to one of his colleagues out of town, and when it came back as being from two different individuals, he could put the crazy side of his mind to rest.

And, well, if it _did_ come back as a match. . . . Then he'd worry about rewriting his whole world view later.

*

Booth rewound the tape a third time and watched again as Dean threw himself off his cot and clamped his hands to his head before the feed dissolved into static. He glanced over at Angela, who leaned forward, staring into the monitor and carefully not looking through the glass next to her at the prisoner sitting at the table. "Well?" he asked. "What do you think?"

"I can't be sure without using any of my software," she said, "but this looks pretty legit to me." She tilted her head, looking thoughtful. "The light grows too slowly to be a flare, but it might be attached to some kind of electromagnetic pulse generator. Although I don't know why that wouldn't have wiped the whole hard drive."

Booth nodded along to the yappy tech talk. Angela tended to be better about that stuff than any of the real squints, but she still sometimes got a little too into her job. "But that's about what happened in the lab? The light and noise and everything?"

Angela straightened and nodded. "Well, the lab had more flashing lights, and it all seemed to happen a lot faster, but that's definitely the noise we heard. Felt like it was drilling right into my head." She snuck a quick glance towards where Dean sat slumped in the interrogation room and shuddered. "At least none of us ended up with our ears actually bleeding."

"We had a doctor look him over before we brought him in." Booth folded his arms, studying Dean's posture. Henricksen had collected a fair number of witness statements and video clips, but Booth hadn't seen any indication of Dean ever looking this . . . defeated. "It's nothing permanent. His ears are probably still ringing, though."

"Yeah, well." Angela sighed. "So are mine. You think he used the same device?"

"A smaller version, maybe. There was some broken glass at the jail, but nothing on the level of what happened in the lab."

"I don't even want to think about where he must've been hiding it."

Booth grimaced. "Yeah." He decided to change the subject. "You've spent more time face to face with this guy than I have. Do you think he did this?"

Angela shrugged. "I'm not exactly the professional here, Booth."

"I'm not asking you to be. I just want your opinion."

Angela nodded slowly, her arms wrapping tight around her chest. "I don't know. Just six months ago, I would have said no. He looked as shocked as we were, last night, maybe even more. But." She took a deep breath and let it out, looking down at the floor. "I can't put anything past anyone any more, you know? If Zack could do what he did. . . ."

"Yeah. I know what you mean." Booth put his hand on her arm, rubbing it until she met his eyes, then let the moment go. "According to Henricksen, this guy's willing to do just about anything."

"But according to Hodgins' websites, Dean and his brother were just trying to do good for people."

"If you ask Zack, so was he."

Angela shivered. "What about you, Booth? Do you think he did it?"

Booth shook his head. "It doesn't matter what I think. This guy is wanted for a list of crimes longer than my leg. It's my job to bring him in."

"But you don't, do you?"

Booth stared through the glass at Dean, who stared at his hands and wiggling his fingers. Angela was right. He didn't think Dean had done this. But that was a dangerous thing to be admitting out loud before he went in to question a prisoner. "I think we've got a lot of questions, and only one person around who might be able to answer them."

"But it doesn't make sense. Why would he set off another . . . whatever that was? He was all by himself. What could he possibly have gotten from doing that, other than a massive headache and bloody ears?"

"Us," Booth said. "Asking exactly that question."

The door opened and Sweets peeked his head in. "Hey guys. Is it time yet?"

Angela shot Booth an amused look. "You called Sweets in?"

"Are you kidding?" Booth jumped right on to her lighter tone. "He'd pout at me for weeks if he missed this."

"I would not!" Sweets protested. "Okay, maybe I would, but come on. This is Dean Winchester here. A case like this only comes along so often."

Angela smirked at him. "Yeah, well, thank god for that. You two have fun, okay?" She slid past Sweets at the door, flicking Booth a wave. "If you want me to take a closer look at that video, email me the file. I don't have my full set up, but I can do some stuff from home, at least."

"Got it." Booth flashed her a smile. "Thanks, Angela." She smiled back, took one last quick look at Dean, then hurried off, shaking her head. Sweets watched her go, then turned back to Booth.

"You've got video?"

"Of what happened last night in the jail, yeah." Booth hit rewind, and played the tape in question again. The whole thing, from the moment the noise started to build to the crackle of the static, only lasted about a minute and a half.

"Woah." Sweets' mouth hung open. "That is some serious self-flagellation, there."

Booth frowned. "Self-fle-whatsit?"

"Flagellation. Like, punishment." Sweets held up his hands. "I looked over Dean's psychological profile again last night. Dude has got some serious issues, man."

"He digs up graves for funsies. I'm thinking that's a given."

"Yeah, okay, but dude. Think about it. As near as we can tell, this guy was, like, glued to his father's side for twenty-six years of his life, right? And then, bam. Dad's suddenly totally AWOL, not on any radar that we know about. So Dean attaches himself to little brother, and they go on, like, a three-year crime spree across the country. They're totally untouchable, going from place to place too fast for the FBI to keep up, and even when they do, the Winchesters, like, vanish, right out from under everyone's noses. They take out an entire jail in Colorado, faking their own deaths in the process, and then suddenly, poof, Dean turns up in the middle of a highly secured laboratory with strong connections to the FBI?" Sweets tilted his head down, his eyebrows shooting up. "I mean, come on! Who does that?"

Booth raised his eyebrows back, shaking his head slowly. "Yeah. So he's crazy. Using crazy logic."

Sweets frowned at him, lips all pursed up in a prissy little knot. "Okay, first off, that's some totally ableist language you're rocking, there."

"Able-what?"

"Second, you're missing my point. He had a reason for it, Booth. No one does anything for no reason, not even people using 'crazy logic'."

"Okay, fine, Sweets, what's your magical shrinky insight on this one?"

"He's finally feeling guilty. He wants to be punished for his crimes, and when you guys weren't doing it fast enough, he set off a secondary device to punish himself in his cell."

Booth stared at him for a moment. "Yeah. That's definitely crazy logic."

"I will bet you it happens again. Maybe not tonight -- he might see the interrogation as some penance -- but definitely soon."

"Sweets, we can't even figure out how he got the _second_ device in there, let alone a third. The guy was naked."

Sweets frowned again, brows pulling together. "Yeah, that's weird. I haven't figured that part out, yet."

"I'll tell ya what, Sweets. Why don't you ask him?"

"Oh, dude, no way, you're letting me do the interrogation? In the room and everything?"

"I'm letting you sit in. If you're good."

Sweets straightened, eyes wide. "Oh, I'll be good. I'll be totally good. Oh man, my friends are _not_ going to believe this." He paused in the doorway. "I mean, not that I'll tell them. This being an open investigation and all --"

"Sweets." Booth held up a hand. "Let's just go do it, okay?"

Sweets smiled. "Yeah. Yeah. Awesome."

Booth shook his head. With Sweets in the room, Dean would be guaranteed to get enough "self-flagellianating" to last him for weeks.

**Chapter 3: The Truth**

The other reapers had all left when the sun rose, getting back to the business of death and shuttling souls to their destinations. A collision across town had taken out six people in the night when another car had run a yellow light. Four drivers, a passenger, and a pedestrian using a nearby sidewalk. They weren't Tessa's assignment, though, and she couldn't be sure they hadn't all been on another reaper's list.

If those were the only consequences of the sudden reentry of a damned soul into life, then the entire world had gotten off lucky.

Tessa didn't have any pressing assignments and she needed to believe that Death had given her forewarning of Dean's return for a reason, so she'd stuck around, following the scientists and law enforcement officers home and just observing their nightly routines: the lovers falling exhausted into bed together; the scholar sitting up to review old notes from other cases; the soldier in his office, staring at the phone and wishing it wasn't too early to call his son; all of them awake, minds spinning until well after the new day had begun. She'd followed Dean as well, watching as they booked him and gave him new clothes and he, too, lay awake, mind too full of questions and doubt to quiet down into sleep. Death wasn't the only consequence of a world out of balance.

She'd seen the angel when it'd arrived, blasting into the jail cell like a hurricane. Part of her had hoped that its haste would be the solution, that it'd liquefy Dean's brain with the full power of its grace, but the intervention of the guards had sent it fleeing, and Dean's life remained a new, unwelcome part of the world.

So she'd waited. She'd stuck around when the soldier stuck Dean in a room and badgered him with questions that had no answers. She'd watched as, tired of talking in circles, he'd sent Dean back to his cell and turned to equally dissatisfying reports from his people working in the lab. And she'd followed as Dean was thrown once again into his cell, the sun well on its way towards setting before Dean was left alone long enough for the angel to return.

And when she saw it coming, she broke one of Death's own cardinal rules and stepped in.

It'd been millenia since she'd last seen an angel on Earth and until yesterday she'd nearly forgotten the enormity and brightness of an angel's true form. This one was smaller than the ones she remembered, nothing more than a foot soldier, a sky scraper with only two faces. The angel's radiance had no effect on her -- reapers and angels were separate entities, belonging to different levels of dimensionality and running on parallel paths -- but Tessa still nearly took a step backward in the face of the glowing irritation pouring off this one's form.

 _Reaper_ , it said. Its voice, now that it wasn't pitching it to a human's perception, was deep and low, rattling the space between the air around them without touching even a molecule of the physical world. _You're not needed here._

"Come off it, Angel." Tessa straightened her shoulders, her own height barely a fraction of the angel's, but formidable in its rock-steady presence in the world. Angels were made for heaven, reapers to walk the Earth. "You can't intimidate me and frankly it's annoying."

The tremendous brightness of it settled, fading from ultraviolet to a petulant greenish-blue. _My name,_ it said, _is Castiel._

"It's nice to meet you, Castiel," said Tessa, though she didn't even remotely mean it. Angels tended to be far more trouble than they were worth, always out to bend and twist the natural order to their own whims. "I'm Tessa."

 _Tessa,_ said Castiel. _No one is going to die, tonight. You have no business here._

Tessa snorted. "People die every night, Castiel. My business is everywhere."

 _No one is going to die_ here _, tonight._ The green tinge went chartreuse. She'd hit a nerve. _I've come merely to communicate._

"You're an idiot." Tessa folded her arms over her chest. "That man in there doesn't belong here. The balance of the world is shifting and you will be responsible for the consequences."

Castiel huffed, its presence expanding to fill the block until it blotted out the entire jail from her view. _That is God's will. The Righteous Man has broken, and with him broke the first Seal. The end of the human era is upon us and soon the Kingdom of Heaven will reign supreme. It is as it has been written._

Yeah, this angel was a pompous ass, alright, just like all the others Tessa had the misfortune to have met. She found herself extremely irritated with its attitude, and its belief that its god had ultimate dominion over the natural order. No one messed with her world and angels certainly weren't above the power and whim of Death. "Right. And is it your god's will that the 'righteous man' have his head blown off by an over-enthusiastic angel?"

Castiel's presence wavered. _What do you mean?_

What a moron. "Surely you noticed what your attempts to 'talk' were doing to him, last night."

Castiel pulsed a deep blue. _He wasn't listening. He'll be more prepared, now. He is the Righteous Man, he must be one of the few --_

"Yeah, he's really not. Trust me, I've tried to work with this guy, before. He's almost as thick as you are."

She wasn't an expert at reading angels in their natural form, but she thought perhaps Castiel didn't understand her use of slang. The fact that it hadn't tried to obliterate her yet was a clue.

Castiel held still, faces turned away for several moments before it spoke again. _I may require a vessel,_ it said. Tessa threw her hands in the air.

"Could be."

 _Thank you, Reaper. Your counsel on this matter will not be forgotten._

And with a rush of celestial intent, the angel vanished again, filling the air with wavering static in its wake. Tessa stood on the street for several more moments, looking at the spot it had vacated.

If she hadn't spoken up, it might have managed to kill Dean off and accidentally end the whole thing then and there. Instead, she'd sent it winging off for exactly what it needed to keep Dean in the running for the foreseeable future, as short as that was turning out to be.

Death was going to have her head for this.

*

The Angelator was in ruins. A crack ran down the middle of the base protector and all of her software had been corrupted by whatever had taken out the Jeffersonian's computer system the night before. Angela righted her desk chair, gingerly brushing the shattered glass bits off, then sat down on it backwards, folding her hands across the top and looking over the remains of one of her favorite pieces of equipment. She was okay with losing some of the case files -- it wasn't like she wanted to go back and watch her little modeled men and women get their bits hacked and blown off when she wasn't actively helping to solve a murder -- but the Christmas tree she'd created the year they were all quarantined for valley fever was gone. It wasn't often she got to use her resources here at the Jeffersonian to create something beautiful and she couldn't help but mourn its loss.

She'd heard him coming, but she still startled just a little when Hodgins suddenly appeared in her office doorway. "Hey." He offered her a small smile and came over, resting his hands on her shoulders and following her gaze. "You skipped dinner, didn't you?"

Angela sighed. "I wasn't hungry." She straightened up, leaning back in his grip. "How'd you find me here, anyway?"

"Lucky guess." Hodgins started rubbing her shoulders and Angela closed her eyes, groaning softly under her breath. "I came by earlier. Couldn't wait until after the FBI's people finished picking the whole thing over to get a second look."

Angela tilted her head back and opened her eyes again, trying to get a look at his face. "I love you, sweetie, but sometimes you're really weird."

Hodgins laughed. "Yeah. I know." He rubbed harder and she closed her eyes again, basking in the sensation of his fingers, even if they weren't quite skilled enough to actually start working out the various knots of tension that seemed to have taken up residence in her muscles. "So. Anything worth salvaging?"

Angela sighed softly, rolling her neck back until her head rested against his chest. "The good news is, most of my paintings are fine. Anything with a glass face or electrical wiring is toast, though."

"Must have something to do with silicon." Hodgins had that 'time to experiment' tone lurking in his voice, but it faded a moment later. Probably when he remembered that Zack wasn't around to help him design one. She raised her hand to rest it on one of his and they both fell silent, letting the stillness of the empty lab wrap around them, filling up their negative spaces. She leaned back to rest more flush against his body, not wanting any of those spaces between them. He tilted his head down and kissed her hair, then made his way down towards her ear.

Someone cleared their throat from the doorway.

Hodgins jerked upright and might have pulled away if Angela hadn't tightened her hand over his reflexively. They both spun to face the doorway. Angela's hand clamped down harder. She wondered how many more of these surprises she could take before she just collapsed.

Sam Winchester stood in the doorway to her office, his shoulders seeming to fill it as completely as any door. The mug shots didn't do the man justice. Hodgins had called Birimbau a giant, but the man she had in her admittedly spotty memories of Fiji had nothing on this guy. Angela shrank back against Hodgins' chest and tried to surreptitiously reach for her cellphone.

Then Sam raised his hands and his face opened up, and just like that he transformed from an intimidating killer to a giant puppy. For the life of her, Angela couldn't guess which, if either, was Sam's natural state.

"It's okay," he said. He stepped into the office, letting a small brunette woman step up beside him. "We're not here to hurt you."

Hodgins took a step back, pulling Angela and her chair with him. "Well," he said. "I know I'm reassured."

"Jack, don't." Angela had a feeling this wasn't the time for his typical sarcasm. Why hadn't she listened when Booth said not to go anywhere without a bodyguard? Sam could probably take her and Hodgins apart with his little finger.

Sam stopped in his tracks, his hands still raised. She recognized the gesture; Dean had stood the same way. The Winchesters didn't share a whole lot by way of physical features, but she could see the resemblance in the way they moved. She managed to get her cellphone out and was starting to dial when it somehow jerked out of her fingers, skittering across the floor. She heard an echoing _thunk_ and wondered if that was Hodgins' phone joining hers.

Sam frowned, turning to the woman beside him. "Ruby."

"What?" She shrugged. "You don't want them calling the cops."

Sam huffed, his entire upper body moving with the sound, and turned back towards Angela and Hodgins. Angela froze, her hand outstretched to retrieve the phone.

"Um," she said. "Why _are_ you here?"

"To see you." Sam's face opened into the puppy look again, and he hunched forward like he was trying to look smaller. Angela told herself it didn't make him any less dangerous, but she had to admit, the posture worked. "You're Angela Montenegro, right?"

Hodgins stiffened behind her. "How do you know that?" He stepped out. Angela put her hand out to keep him from crossing in front of her.

Sam shifted back a step, eyebrows high and guileless. "Same way I know you're Jack Hodgins. You guys have helped Dr. Brennan solve countless cases. The information's not hard to find, if you know where to look."

Angela swallowed, making a mental note to scour the internet for any mention of her name and get it taken the hell down. Maybe she'd change it again. Something nice and innocuous like "Jane Smith". "What do you want with us?"

"I need to know what happened here. What happened to my brother."

Hodgins shook his head, and Angela realized that where he was standing, he blocked his cellphone and her right leg from view. She made to edge her foot out to try and kick the phone closer to herself, then tensed up when she realized she couldn't move. She was pinned down to the chair. Hodgins grunted, and she wondered if he'd just made the same discovery. She couldn't figure out how Sam was managing it, then looked past him and noticed his friend, Ruby, staring at her. Her eyes were shadowed in a way that made them look like they'd turned pure black.

Hodgins grunted again, his hands tightening into fists. "What the hell did you do?"

Sam shook his head, looking almost sad. "I'm sorry, but she's right. I can't get caught by the cops, right now. There's too much I need to do." He held his hands out again, palms upward this time, pleading. "Please. I need your help, here."

Angela spoke up before Hodgins could let his mouth get him into more trouble. "We don't know what happened. We were just doing our jobs and suddenly everything went all . . . weird."

Sam nodded, as though that was exactly the answer he'd expected. Angela wondered if he and Dean had planned all this, or if Dean had gone off on his own, somehow. "Okay. I know this is going to be hard to believe, but I'm not the bad guy. Something's going on that's really, really dangerous and I just want to make sure no one else gets hurt."

"Why us?" Hodgins asked. Angela nodded. Sam gave them an awkward smile.

"Because you guys were here?" He shrugged a little sheepishly. "Honestly, I didn't realize you were, Jack." Hodgins stiffened at the use of his first name, but kept quiet. "I thought it'd just be Angela."

"What?" Angela flickered her eyes up towards Hodgins' face, noticing that he was starting to turn red. She looked back at Sam. "Why _me?_ "

"You're the artist. I thought --" Sam cut himself off with a shake of his head, as though he knew he was about to sound like an idiot. "I thought you'd be more likely to believe us. To have some sympathy."

Angela swallowed, shifting back as much as she could while pinned down in her chair. "Well, I'm sorry, but you thought wrong."

Sam closed his eyes and swallowed, then opened them. The hard look he'd had coming in was back again, the puppy banished to some far corner of his psyche. "Then I'm sorry, too." He gestured briefly to Ruby, some sort of signal, and the pressure holding Angela down in the chair tightened. "Because I can't let you guys go until I fix this."

Angela breathed hard through her nose, unable to stop herself from trying to struggle against the force holding her down. She'd never been more terrified in her life, and a quick glance towards Hodgins told her he wasn't doing much better. She wondered if this was what he and Dr. Brennan had felt, when they were buried alive. She wondered if it was better or worse to be staring the enemy in the face, instead of a coworker and a ton of loose dirt.

"Tell me everything you know," Sam said. "What happened here? What did the creature look like? How did it react?"

"Creature?" Hodgins' voice shot up half an octave. "There was no _creature_ , man. It was just your brother."

Sam shook his head sharply. "My brother's dead."

"Yeah, well, he looked pretty alive to me."

"That wasn't him."

"Hey." Angela broke in. "It was. He's been fingerprinted and everything. The FBI confirmed it."

Sam started to pace, just a few steps back and forth. Ruby leaned up against the doorway, looking like she was settling in for the long haul. Angela wished she could go to the bathroom.

"The FBI doesn't know anything," Sam said. "There are things out there -- horrible, deadly things -- that can change their shape to look like whomever they want. Fingerprints and all. I buried Dean myself. He -- it's not him."

Angela shrank back as much as she could in her seat. "So you're saying the FBI has some kind of shapeshifting monster locked up?" Sam looked up and nodded quickly, stepping towards her. She flinched and felt Hodgins jerk. Sam froze again, then backed off, lifting his hands.

"Sorry. But yes. That's exactly what I'm saying."

Angela wasn't able to keep her skepticism out of her voice. "Do they _usually_ have a hate-on for glass, or is this one just special?"

Sam looked around, as though just noticing the shards littering the floor. "No," he said. "This is new. But that just makes it that much more dangerous."

"So, again," Hodgins said. "What do you want from us?"

Sam took a breath, visibly forcing himself to calm down. Angela thought about what Sweets had said about how close he was to his brother. She wondered if he'd been this crazy before he thought Dean died, or if these were the symptoms of his grief. She thought it was maybe a little bit of both. "I need to know where it's being held. What it's been doing, what it's been saying. It might help me identify what it is and how to kill it."

Angela shot a glance at Hodgins, wishing he'd look back so she could work out what was going on in his mind. She could see he was thinking in the way his mouth turned down at the edges, but she couldn't work out what sort of conclusions he might be drawing. He was a scientist, sure, but she knew he wasn't as rigid in his beliefs as Brennan was. And there was a whole lot to this case that she was pretty sure no one could properly explain.

Except, maybe, for Sam and Dean.

"This is what you really do," Hodgins said. "You go around hunting what you think are monsters."

Sam nodded. "I know they are. Haven't you ever seen something or heard something or felt something that you just couldn't explain?"

Angela shivered. "Maybe," she said. "There was one time, in the desert. Something . . . led me. To someone who was lost."

Hodgins frowned. "You never told me that."

Angela shrugged. "It was awhile ago. I started to think I'd dreamed it."

Sam smiled, just a small quirk of his lips at first, but then a full grin. He had dimples. "Most people do. But the supernatural is real. It's here. Sometimes it's good, like what you saw. And sometimes it gets violent."

Angela nodded slowly, shooting a look at Hodgins and biting her lip. "Okay. If I agree to help you, will you let Hodgins go?"

Hodgins shook his head. "Oh hell no, Angie, I am not leaving you here with him."

Sam shrugged sadly. "I couldn't anyway. I told you, I can't get caught right now. It's too dangerous for everyone if I do."

Ruby spoke up then, still looking bored in the doorway. "I could knock him out," she offered. "There's some sturdy looking closets around here."

"No!" Angela twitched against the pressure holding her still again. Ruby smiled at her and winked, her eyes still hidden in that strange shadow. "Look, what if we both agree? I thought you didn't want to hurt anyone."

Sam stepped back, looking between the two of them. Hodgins twitched his head sideways, looking torn, then nodded. "Fine. We can go back to my place. No one's using the apartment above the garage right now, anyway."

Sam frowned. "Not that I'm arguing, but why? You're a scientist."

Hodgins shook his head. "I'm an empiricist. I look at the facts. And right now, they're mostly adding up to a weirdo zombie voodoo ritual gone horribly wrong."

Sam blinked. "Huh." He shrugged, then nodded back to Ruby, and Angela felt the pressure holding her down disappear. "Okay then. Let's go kill something evil."

*

The interrogation had gone pretty much exactly the way Dean had expected. The FBI agent -- what the hell kind of name was "Seeley Booth", anyway? -- had asked questions, and Dean had tried to ignore him. So Booth had switched to intimidation tactics, and Dean went for sarcasm, though his heart wasn't much in it. Then there were the attempts to pick apart his brain, which would have been funny if they hadn't hit quite so close to the truth on some things, and Dean got a little belligerent. It didn't help that Booth had his little boy wonder psychologist with him. Dean had yet to meet a psychologist who wasn't a completely dickwad, and this Sweets kid was no exception. All "I understand your need for self-punishment" and "this must be very stressful for you" and "he's deflecting, Booth, don't you see he's deflecting?" It was around the time that the kid had started trying to tell him that the FBI could help him conquer his codependent reliance on his younger brother that Dean had asked Booth if they could kick the kid out.

Booth had. Dean couldn't help but respect the guy for that one, just a little bit.

Of course, then they just went right back into it. Dean had even tried going for the truth, but that had gone about as well as he'd expected it to. Booth had told him to stop playing games, and Dean got so frustrated with the whole thing that he'd made a fatal error.

"Victor believed it, you know," he'd said, waiting just long enough for Booth to figure out he meant Henricksen. "Oh, not officially. Hell, that guy held out for years, started asking if Sam and me got the bad touch or something, but at the end? He was right there beside us."

Booth's fingers tightened on the table top. "Yeah? You end up killing him, too?"

"That was fucked up. It never should have happened." Dean shook his head. "He was a hell of a guy. I even liked him. And then a demon blasted him into vapor."

Booth pushed away from the table. "Right, we're done for today."

"Is that what it's gonna take to convince you, Booth? You need a demon crawling up someone's ass?"

"That reminds me." Booth knocked on the door to summon the guards. "We're going to have to be extra careful while searching you tonight. Make sure you don't have any more 'demons' on you."

"I'm not kidding." Dean kept his eyes focussed on Booth, even while he was lugged up by his biceps and pulled toward the door. "Look, that was stupid. I'm an asshole. But they might come after you, too." The guards paused, and Booth hesitated a moment, then waved them on. Dean saw his chance, saw the crack in Booth's skepticism, but he was pulled away too quickly. "Please! Just be careful, okay? I don't want anyone else to die!" As the guards pushed him into the elevator, Dean caught one last glimpse of Booth, his eyebrows drawing together as Sweets came up beside him. Dean had almost had him, but Sweets was certain to turn the whole thing around to be about Dean's 'delusions'.

He really hated psychologists.

And now he was alone again, sitting on the cot in his cell. It was a different one, he thought, maybe in another part of the building, or another jail entirely -- not that it mattered. Jail cells pretty much all looked the same, even between small towns and big cities. Bars. Concrete. Stained mattress. Toilet bowl. He looked down at his hands. They'd left the cuffs on, this time, just like Henricksen had in Colorado, to keep him from doing whatever it was they thought he'd done to himself last night. They didn't just think Dean was a danger to society, that Sweets kid had them convinced he was a danger to himself, too. Forget jail, Dean was going to be blithering in a straitjacket for the rest of his life.

And wasn't that a cheery thought.

Lights out came and went, but Dean didn't move. His cell never really got dark, anyway -- would've messed with the security cameras they had set up to watch him 24/7. Being one of the FBI's most wanted wasn't nearly as exciting when they actually managed to catch you.

Wasn't really all that exciting when they didn't, either.

Dammit, he'd really hoped they were done with all this. If Henricksen had lived, if they'd stuck around just a little bit longer and had been there to protect him and Nancy and the deputy and everyone, then maybe they might've been. Dean and Sam maybe could've stopped Lilith then and there, and Dean never would have had to die. He never would have ended up being poked at on some fancy lab table, and he never would have been brought back to life in the middle of the world's weirdest nuke attack. And Booth and Sweets and the bearded guy and the two hot scientists wouldn't be in trouble right now.

This wasn't doing him any good. He smacked his hand down on the cot, then jumped when he heard something crackle out in the hallway.

The wind had picked up outside, whistling around the corners of the building, and rattling things on top of the roof. Another crackle, this one accompanied by a flash of a bursting bulb. Dean pushed himself to his feet, looking around for anything he might be able to use as a weapon.

 _Pop_

 _Flash_

"What the hell does this thing have against lights?" Dean muttered. The cell was clear of everything except Dean and his handcuffs. He was completely weaponless. He started mumbling an exorcism under his breath, just to make sure he remembered it properly, then dropped into as much of a defensive crouch as he could while cuffed and waited.

It didn't take long. The lights outside his cell started to flicker ominously, and then a figure strode into view, his head hunched forward, his trench coat sweeping out behind him. Sparks from bursting bulbs rained down on the man's hair, but he took no notice. He turned when he reached the center of the cell door, then forced it open with no more than a hand gesture. Dean fell back a step and started reciting the exorcism rite in earnest. The figure tilted his head curiously, but otherwise remained unaffected. He strode into the cell, backing Dean all the way up to the back wall, before stopping only a few inches away and staring at him with a cold, vacant expression.

"Dean Winchester," he said.

Dean stared back. "Who the fuck are you?"

The man turned abruptly away, moving along the perimeter of the cell and looking it up and down, as though he was interested in the architecture. "Castiel."

What? "Gesundheit."

"Thank you," said the man. "And yours as well."

 _What?_ "Who _are_ you?"

The man turned, his hands clasped behind his back, and regarded Dean expressionlessly for a moment before lowering his chin, nodding towards Dean's left shoulder. "I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition."

This really wasn't working. "Okay, fine, _what_ are you?"

The man looked mildly surprised, which Dean figured was a damn sight better than completely blank. "I'm an angel of the Lord."

Dean was starting to wonder if maybe, just maybe, Sweets was right. He was definitely being punished by _someone_. "There's no such thing."

The man frowned softly. "This is your problem, Dean. You have no faith."

Dean flinched back as a flash of that sourceless light that had come upon him the night before lit up the cell, casting shadows behind the man, enormous wings stretching over three of the walls and maybe half the ceiling. Dean felt his mouth drop open as the light faded and the shadows vanished again.

"Holy --"

"Yes," said Castiel. "Precisely." He stepped forward again, back into Dean's personal bubble. "We need to talk, Dean. Alone."

He reached for Dean's head, pressing his fingers to it before Dean could get out of the way, and the world melted away beneath Dean's feet.

*

To say that Hodgins was uncomfortable with this arrangement was a vast understatement. He switched off the alarm system over the door to the garage apartment, somewhat reassured by the presence of Angela's hand on his arm, then gestured for Ruby and Sam to precede them into the apartment itself. He couldn't get rid of the feeling that he was making a huge mistake. He was letting a serial killer -- and yeah, it was a whole lot harder to keep the "alleged" part in his head when the guy was essentially holding him and his fiance hostage -- into his home, giving him access to everything that he and his father and his grandfather had built up over the years. Still, he knew he'd do worse, if it meant keeping Angela safe. At least they weren't going to _her_ apartment.

The fact that he hadn't gone into the garage apartment since he'd gone through to collect Zack's things wasn't helping. The grounds of his home seemed overly large and empty since Zack had left. Using it as a base for plotting to assist a wanted man escape FBI custody felt like a betrayal. It went against everything Hodgins stood for -- well, except the whole "sticking it to the man" bit. But he'd never meant that like this.

Sam whistled as he took in the space, moving to the window that looked out over the tennis courts. "This is all yours?"

"Yup." Hodgins shoved his hands into his pockets, wishing that Sam and Ruby had let him grab his cellphone off the floor of Angela's office before leaving the Jeffersonian. "Feel free to rob me blind. I'm very well insured."

Angela pressed up against his side. "Jack."

"Are we going to have a problem?" Ruby asked. "Because knocking you out is still an option."

Hodgins lifted his shoulders, hunching into himself. "No. We're good."

"I'm not a robber," Sam said.

"No," said Hodgins. "You're just a killer."

Sam shrugged. "I don't kill people. Not unless I really have to."

Angela pressed tighter against Hodgins' side. "Yeah, that doesn't help much."

Sam sighed. "There's nothing I can say that will convince you. You won't believe it until you've seen it all, yourselves."

Hodgins felt a shiver run up his spine. "Seen the zombies," he said. "And the ghosts and the demons."

"And vampires," Ruby added. "And werewolves and shapeshifters and pretty much anything else you've ever heard of and said didn't exist."

"Bigfoot?" Hodgins tried.

Sam shook his head. "No. Not that."

"Right." Angela tugged on Hodgins' arm, moving them over towards the couch. "I'm never sleeping again."

"I'm sorry," Sam said. "Most people never have to deal with any of this. Not unless it shows up on their doorstep."

"Or in their lab." Hodgins sighed. "Right, can we get on with this already? No offense, but I really don't want you guys here any longer than you have to be."

Sam nodded, gesturing for them to take a seat. Hodgins would have stayed standing, but Angela sat down, and she wasn't going to be letting go of his arm any time soon. Sam took a seat across from them in an armchair. Ruby wandered around the apartment, occasionally picking something up and looking it over like she was casing the place. Hodgins tried to keep her in his peripheral vision. He really was well insured, but that didn't mean he wanted her making off with any of his stuff. He needed the reminders of where Zack had lived, even if he couldn't bring himself to look at them just yet. She finally took up position behind Sam, like a tiny little body guard.

"Okay." Sam folded his hands in his lap. "You say you don't think the thing pretending to be my brother is being held at the FBI headquarters?"

Angela shook her head. "Booth never gave us the details, but it sounded like they took him to one of the local jails. They had him in interrogation today, though. They might've kept him there a long time."

Sam nodded. "That actually might make things easier. We could get him while he's being transported or at the jail itself. Do you think you can get any more details?"

"I don't know," Angela said. "We don't usually ask about those kinds of things. It'd probably look pretty suspicious if we started."

"But you guys were there when he was arrested. The agent trusts you."

Angela swallowed. "Yeah, uh. That doesn't -- we had a friend, recently, who kind of. . . ." She trailed off and Hodgins leaned in, putting his hand over hers where it still gripped his arm and giving it a squeeze. Zack had left a hell of a mess behind him, including a giant mountain of trust issues for every member of the Medico-Legal team.

Sam watched them, his brow furrowing, but didn't press for details. "Okay. But you might at least get to know his schedule. They'd tell you when he was going to be in the FBI building, right?"

Angela nodded. "Yeah. I could get that."

Something shifted in Hodgins' peripheral vision and he blinked, jerking upright. "Hey," he said, twisting in his seat. "Where the hell did your friend go?"

Ruby was nowhere to be seen, not behind Sam, not wandering around the room. Hodgins hadn't seen her leave -- the bathroom was directly behind Sam and he was sure he'd've noticed if she started in that direction. She seemed to have just vanished.

"What?" Sam turned himself, checking behind him, then looking past Angela and Hodgins to the area behind the couch. Hodgins felt a shift in the air pressure and Sam stood, his lips curled into a snarl. Angela shrieked and curled into Hodgins' side as Sam suddenly rushed toward them, pulling a knife from the back of his belt.

Someone shouted behind them and then Sam pushed past them, vaulting over the couch. Hodgins twisted again, wrapping both arms around Angela as he turned to see what the hell was going on.

Sam slammed into Dean, pushing him back into a bookcase, and would probably have stabbed him if Dean hadn't grabbed Sam by the wrist. Sam growled, something that sounded like "What the hell are you?" and Dean growled back, a more distinct "Sam, it's _me_ ," before throwing his brother off, thankfully away from the couch. Angela tugged at Hodgins' shirt, pulling them both away from the commotion as Sam pushed back to his feet, knife still held out and ready.

The third man, someone Hodgins didn't recognize wearing a suit and tie and a Columbo jacket, stood just a few feet away from where the brothers fought, looking unconcerned.

Dean moved, shifting to put the couch between himself and his brother, and Angela and Hodgins pulled back several more feet. Hodgins considered making a break for the door, but Sam seemed to have forgotten that he and Angela were there and frankly Hodgins wanted to keep it that way.

"You're Sam Winchester," Dean said. "You're 25 years old. When you were twelve, you wrote all your angsty poetry in motel copies of Gideon's Bible, and that's your favorite silver knife."

Sam paused, still stooped into a fighting stance, and peered at Dean suspiciously. "Dean wasn't the only one who knew that stuff."

Dean's brows went up. "Even the bit about the poetry?" He sighed. "Sam. I swear, it's me."

Sam slowly shifted his grip on the knife, turning it until he held it out handle-first. "Prove it."

Dean let out a low sigh and took the knife. He held out one arm, bared by the short sleeve of his prison issue jumpsuit, and pressed the blade against his forearm. Angela muffled a sympathetic gasp under her hand. Sam's eyes went wide.

"Dean," he said again, this time with certainty. He circled the couch in three steps and wrapped Dean in a tight hug.

Angela kept her hand pressed to her mouth, but Hodgins could still make out her soft words. "That's so sweet."

Yeah, Hodgins thought. Maybe now they'd leave.

Sam pulled back from the hug, looking Dean over carefully. "I don't understand. How?"

Dean smiled crookedly. "Yeah, about that." He glanced over at the man in the suit, who turned his head to stare at Hodgins. "Uh, Castiel."

The man didn't seem to even move, just was suddenly standing directly in front of Hodgins and Angela. They didn't have time to do much more than gasp for breath before he pressed his fingers to each of their foreheads, and everything went black.

*

Brennan forwent the custom of knocking in favor of walking straight into Booth's office, though he'd had his door closed. She would likely feel bad about doing him the discourtesy later but at the moment she was too annoyed to worry much about it.

"Okay, Booth, I'm here. What was so important?"

Booth had been staring at the screen of a laptop with intent focus, but he looked up when she spoke. "Bones. I called you two hours ago."

"And again half an hour later. And then an hour after that." Brennan folded her arms over her chest. "I came as soon as I was able."

"It took you two hours to get here? What, did you get stuck in traffic?"

Brennan shook her head. "Of course not. I prefer not to take my car when I'm traveling to this part of the district. The public transportation system is perfectly adequate, making the use of gas superfluous."

Booth stared at her for a long moment, as he did frequently when she tried to explain something to him. "Yeah, Bones. It was an expression."

"Oh." He ended up telling her that frequently as well. She wondered where people went to become so familiar with so many different expressions. "I was cataloging bone shards left over from the attack on my lab," she explained. "It's an extremely large task, and as I'm still in the process of determining who will be my new assistant, it's one that falls entirely to me."

Booth nodded. "Well, I'm sorry to tear you way from your bone shards. I just thought you might want to see this."

"I can't determine that until I know what it is you think I'll want to see." Brennan leaned forward, trying to get a look at the laptop. "Do you have evidence as to what happened in my lab? Because that I would be very interested in seeing."

"Maybe." Booth grimaced faintly and hit a few buttons on the laptop keyboard. "Could you close the door for me? People have been in and out all day."

"You did lose a prisoner," Brennan said as she crossed the short distance to the door and eased it closed. She found she was far more aware of the fragility of all the glass surfaces that surrounded her on a daily basis.

"I didn't lose him." Booth thrust his lower mandible forward, pressing out his lower lip. "He escaped."

"But he was technically in your custody."

Booth sighed. "Right, just . . . come over here and sit down, would you?" He turned the laptop around on the desk so it faced one of the chairs. Brennan sat down, wondering if his irritability was entirely due to Dean Winchester's escape, or if there was something else bothering him. Angela, she knew, would be able to tell her immediately. Even Sweets would likely have a reasonable guess. At times it frustrated her, that she had such an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the human body and of human society, and yet she frequently couldn't determine the underlying causes of the actions of those around her.

The laptop screen showed a video playback program on which a still frame of a prisoner in a cell was displayed. Though his head was turned away from the camera, Brennan recognized the stature of Dean Winchester by the way he held his shoulders. "Is this from last night?" She looked up at Booth, who was concentrating once again on the laptop screen, though it wasn't currently doing much of anything interesting. "Did he set off another one of those devices?"

"Just . . . watch." Booth pressed play, and Brennan refocused on the laptop screen.

There was nothing interesting to see, at first. Dean remained seated on his cot, apparently staring across at the far wall. He held himself very still, and Brennan wondered if he'd fallen asleep sitting up. Then he raised one fist and slammed it down on the cot.

The screen fuzzed and the image blurred out into a burst of static for a moment. When it resettled, Dean was on his feet, holding himself low in a defensive stance Brennan recognized as a modified version of one she'd learned in her karate classes. There were a few more bursts of static, then a shadow stretched out over the floor of the cell in a humanoid form. The speakers of the laptop let out a resounding crash, and Dean backed across the cell as the figure casting the shadow entered the frame.

"That's not a guard," Brennan noted. She was fairly certain that long coats were not standard police issue.

Booth shushed her, his eyes still glued to the scene. Brennan could see why a moment later, when the new figure on the screen began to speak.

"Dean Winchester," it said.

"Who the hell are you?" asked Dean.

"He doesn't know his accomplice," Brennan noted. Booth shushed her again.

What followed on the screen played out like a scene from an avant-garde horror film. It was difficult to make out through the continuing bursts of static, but the man in the coat seemed to be claiming to be an angel. Brennan was surprised to note that Dean had about the same reaction she would if she were confronted with the same statement, and in response --

Brennan sat back as the screen dissolved into fuzz once more, this time apparently for good. Booth gently closed the laptop and gazed at her. She looked back, feeling a knot of tension grow between her eyes.

"I don't understand," she said. "Did you want me to identify Winchester's accomplice? This seems to be much more within Angela's field of expertise."

Booth shook his head, still staring at her. "I plan to get her to look at it, too. I want your opinion."

"On what?" Brennan made the connection -- Booth was Catholic, and here was a man claiming to have been sent from God himself. But surely Booth realized that this was merely a hoax, carried out by two criminals in order to provide a diversion. "The wings effect is very impressive. There was no indication on that video of what they must be using to cast the shadows."

Booth leaned forward. "Or maybe what was casting them isn't something that we're meant to see."

"That's what I said. They hid them from the camera quite well."

Booth straightened again, running his hand over his head. "Right," he said. "I should have guessed you wouldn't understand."

"I don't understand," Brennan agreed. "The effect is certainly interesting, but I can't imagine it's one that a hundred film students couldn't manage to reproduce. You can't mean to claim that the man in the video is actually an angel, sent down from Heaven."

Booth became agitated, as he frequently did when she questioned his faith. She didn't understand that, either. In simpler cultures, religion certainly held a position that was not to be questioned by the members of that culture. It served as a societal teacher and governor, one of the elements that held a culture and its people together. But Booth had plenty of other sources for teachers in Western society. She didn't see how his religion expected him to be fulfilled if he wasn't meant to question anything.

"Yeah, you know what, Bones? Maybe I am. Because maybe this guy didn't show up on any of the other camera feeds in the building, going in or out. And maybe we haven't been able to find any traces of Dean within a three mile radius of the jail. Not one witness, not one tire track or footprint, not a single --" He raised his hands, as though reaching for his next example. "-- _hair follicle._ That area is lined with traffic cameras and other surveillance, yet those didn't even _blip_. And you know what? The only way I can explain it is if that --" he tapped the closed laptop with far more than requisite force. "-- is an angel."

"So." Brennan tried to follow his reasoning, but simply couldn't determine how he could come to such an irrational conclusion. "You're giving up."

"What?" Booth stared at her for a moment, his prominent brows pulled together over his nose. "No. No, of course I'm not -- don't you ever wonder what's out there? Don't you ever doubt, even for just a second?"

Brennan straightened in her seat. "Of course I doubt. I question what science has taught me every day. But I don't get my answers from a two thousand year old, mistranslated book. I get them from everything I can observe in the world around me."

Booth sat down on the edge of his desk, hanging his head for a moment. He rubbed the back of his neck, then looked up. "Okay. Then what have you observed? This case has been nuts from the very start. What explanations do you have for everything that's happened?"

Brennan frowned, finding it difficult to look Booth in the eye. She took a deep breath. "I admit, I'm . . . finding it difficult to formulate my hypothesis."

"Right." Booth clapped his hand down on the desk. "Which is squint-talk for 'I don't know'."

"That's not what I'm saying. I mean that, without further access to the remains, or having been able to investigate the location where they were found, or even access to a reliable medical history for the suspect, I'm unable to draw satisfactory conclusions. Science has not failed to match the evidence. The evidence has failed to be available to rigorous scientific study."

Booth sighed, for once letting go of an argument without attempting to win her over with his elaborate metaphors about the mysteries of life. "So we're screwed. We've hit a dead end."

"We're . . . obstructed," Brennan said. "It's possible that further evidence will come to light. I may find the remains amongst the bone shards in the lab." Booth looked up at her, and she shrugged. "Though it's not likely."

They sat there quietly for a moment, Booth hanging his head, his shoulders raised by the pressure of his hands against the desk, Brennan fitting her fingers together over and over. This was usually the part where one of them consoled the other. It was also usually the part where a killer was getting locked away.

It was Booth that broke the silence. "They've offered me the lead on the Winchester case. Apparently, without Henricksen around, I've become the expert."

"Oh," said Brennan. She hadn't realized that Booth had called her here to say goodbye. If she had, she might have knocked. "Will they be assigning another agent to the Jeffersonian?"

Booth looked up at her. "I turned them down."

"Why?"

He shook his head. "I can't chase after a guy when I'm wondering if he's maybe working for God."

Brennan nodded. "That's very wise."

"I'm going to keep extra guards on you and the rest of the Medico-Legal team for the time being. We don't know if Sam was involved in his brother's escape or not. He could still come after you guys."

"Cam said the FBI techs have finished in the lab. We'll be able to get the insurance people in as soon as next week."

"Good. That's -- that's very good."

"It is. Perhaps you could speak with Angela and Hodgins? They've been acting a bit strangely, today, and Angela wouldn't tell me why."

"I will."

They were quiet again, this time for several moments in a row. Then Booth pushed himself to his feet. "You want to grab a coffee?" he asked. "I was thinking of getting coffee. Maybe taking a walk."

Brennan smiled and stood as well. "I could use a coffee. Bone fragments can be very thirsty work."

"And a walk?"

"And a walk."

Booth smiled back and offered her his elbow. Brennan laughed once. "That's an antiquated gesture, you know. I have no need for any walking assistance."

Booth shrugged. "I know. But maybe right now I'm feeling like an antiquated kind of guy."

"That doesn't even make sense."

Booth sighed. From the length of the exhale and the exaggerated movement of his shoulders, Brennan surmised that he was being facetious. "Fine. Don't take my arm."

"You can pay for the coffee," Brennan offered. "That way you can still feel appropriately manly and chivalrous."

"I'll do that."

Brennan smiled at him again. He needed the little things sometimes, like offering her his arm, or holding the door open, or buying her coffee. Just like she sometimes needed him to remind her that there was more to life than sorting through bones.

*

Hodgins swung into one of the open seats at Angela's table in the Royal Diner, setting his backpack down on the end of the table next to the window. Angela looked up from the chicken salad she'd been picking at for the last ten minutes and offered him what she knew was only a wan smile. "Hey, sweetie."

"Hey." He folded his hands on the table, giving her a slight head tilt. "Hard day at the office?"

Angela shivered. "I haven't been able to bring myself to go back in there, yet. I don't know if I'm afraid that one of the Winchesters will show up, or if I'm worried they won't and everything will be back to normal."

"Yeah." Hodgins reached out to snag one of her french fries. "I know what you mean. Though I'm thinking the lab's never going to look totally normal again."

"It kinda hasn't for awhile now." Angela heaved a breath and set down her fork. "Still. We have to get back to work eventually."

"Do we?" Angela never realized how much she appreciated how Hodgins looked at her until just then. Always straight on, without the little ticks or sideways looks that the Winchester brothers had, the ones that made her wonder what they were hiding. It helped that he didn't remind her in the least bit of a puppy.

Then her mind caught up with what he'd actually said. "Wait, what?"

"Do we really have to go back to work?" he said again. "It's not like I need the money, and you wouldn't, either. We could just . . . get away."

"Uh, thanks." Angela frowned. "But, you know, of all the things I dreamed of growing up, being a kept woman wasn't one of them."

Hodgins laughed softly. "Yeah, I know. Still. Doesn't it sound kind of nice? Maybe not forever, but just for a little while. While they're putting the lab back together, at least."

Angela let herself imagine it for a bit. There were so many places in the world she wanted to show Hodgins, with Paris topping the list. It would be wonderful, to leave all the gooey bones and dissected brains and deep, dark mysteries behind, to get back to her roots as an artist and just spend her time loving and living life again.

"What about Birimbau?"

Hodgins waved his hand. "I'll have the private detective forward any information to us. I'd say we should go talk to him ourselves, but I've kind of had my fill of giant men, just now."

Angela's lips quirked, then she pulled the reins on the daydream and brought it back to a halt. "I'd love to, sweetie. You know I would. But Booth's already asked me to take a look at some video files, and you know it won't be that long before the next body comes rolling in, and I think Brennan really needs us around, right now."

"Someone's got to help her break in her next assistant, I guess."

"She might even pick one, soon. Cam says she spent all morning in the bone room, sifting through the shards."

Hodgins winced. "That does not sound like fun."

"Nothing about this last case sounds like fun."

"That reminds me." Hodgins reached for his backpack, pulling the zipper open. "I just got these back, today. Figured you might be as interested as I am in the results."

Angela frowned. "What are they?"

He pulled a large manilla envelope out and lay it flat across the table, narrowly avoiding setting it down right on top of a water ring. "DNA work ups. I grabbed some samples from the lab after the explosion and sent them to a buddy of mine at Johns Hopkins to take a look at." He pulled a set of papers out and lay them out on top of the envelope, sideways so they could both look at them.

Not that Angela had any idea what they might mean. "I don't get it. Whose DNA?"

"Dean's." Hodgins skimmed over several lines, then pointed to one of the charts. "From where he cut his foot. And . . ." He skimmed again, then put his other finger on a second chart. "A bit of goo soaked clothes from the Pontiac body." He studied the two charts for a moment, then swung the papers back around so they both faced him, lining the charts up side by side. Angela leaned forward, frowning.

"I'm no professional or anything, but, uh. Those look really similar."

"They are." Hodgins looked up at her, his fingers still pressed to the pages. "These results indicate that the two samples were from the same individual."

Angela shook her head. "Okay. I know we've both managed to believe in, like, seven impossible things before we went to bed yesterday, much less before breakfast, but that's seriously not possible. Is it?"

Hodgins' eyebrows went up, and he turned his eyes back to the pages. "I don't know. I mean, neither sample was the best in the world, and taking decomposition into account on the second one. . . ." He trailed off, his head twisting slowly from side to side. "I'd say it's a . . . 70, maybe 80 percent chance? It could be brothers. Or twins. Or just a laboratory error."

"Or," Angela said softly. "We really saw someone come back to life."

Hodgins looked up at her, his eyes wide, and she held his gaze, suspecting she looked about the same. Angela had always believed there was _something_ out there, some force behind the beauty and intricacy of the world around her, but that didn't mean she'd ever expected to see something as strange as what she'd witnessed over the past few days. What she'd experienced. Hodgins' throwaway comments about hellhounds and demons, voodoo and raising the dead all came flooding back to her, along with the strange look in Sam's friend's eyes, the force that had held her to her chair. The way Sam and Dean and Ruby and the man in the trench coat had of seeming to appear and disappear at will. And now these results, scans from a scientifically conducted test, telling her the impossible had happened.

Then a customer slammed through the door to the diner, and the moment was shattered.

"Nah," Hodgins said.

"No way," Angela agreed. She pushed away the papers and picked up her fork again. Hodgins started clearing them up to shove back into his bag.

"So," he said. "How long do you think Dr. Brennan's next assistant will last?"

And just like that, they brushed it all away. It still lurked, probably always would, just like her vision of Dani in the desert, or the half-glimpsed headless form in the tapes from Maggie Cinders' woods. Some things, Angela thought, were never meant to be truly understood. And maybe the Winchester brothers were part of that.

*

"I don't understand." Tessa found Death seated exactly where he'd been before Dean Winchester had been raised, at the counter at Ben's Chili Bowl, enjoying a messy looking half-smoke in his strange, dignified manner.

"You don't understand what, child?" Death didn't bother glancing up at her. Tracking down Death without being summoned was a taboo few reapers dared to breach.

"Why call me here? For what reason? There were no scores of unwritten deaths, no great natural disasters. And there was nothing I could have done to fix any of it. So why?"

Death glanced up, his face long and blank, his voice a low drawl. "What does it all mean, you mean?"

Tessa winced. It was a low blow, using the most common question asked by the souls of the recently deceased against a reaper. "I -- yes."

Death smiled. "Come now, Tessa. You know better than that."

She did. She growled low under her breath. It had all been just a courtesy call, then, a heads up that the man who had nearly gotten her destroyed by Azazel was about to pop back up amongst the living. She'd really believed she was meant to change it all. As though reapers were intended to do anything more than escort souls to the afterlife.

Not that she was belittling her job. Far from it. It was her entire purpose of being, and she well knew the worth of a human soul and the consequences of it not making it to its proper destination. She'd seen those consequences with her own eyes. That was what frustrated her so much about Dean in the first place. She knew where his soul was meant to be, and it was not in the driver's seat of a 1967 Chevrolet Impala, tooling down Interstate 90 on his way to South Dakota. But all she'd managed to do about it was convince an idiot angel that he needed a vessel to talk to Dean without killing him.

Unless that was it. Unless Death had called her here because she'd been meant to be there outside the jail, to talk to the angel and keep the apocalypse on its course. The idea should have left her cold, should have turned her stomach. It was against the natural order of this world. People were born and they lived and they died and then they moved on. The apocalypse was an anomaly, a travesty against all that was natural and decent. She was meant to be an agent of that order, and yet, somehow, she'd become an agent of its end. But she felt nothing more than a faint annoyance.

Perhaps it would all be well in the end, then. She could only hope.

Death turned back to his chili dog, eternally unconcerned.

Or maybe, just maybe, Death hadn't known, either. Maybe this whole thing had thrown the natural order so off-track that even he didn't know what was going to happen next. Maybe he was throwing things -- throwing Tessa -- at the problem, seeing what managed to stick. Maybe that was all he ever did, and there was no plan to any of it, at all.

"You're over thinking it," Death told her. He patted the stool next to him at the counter, and Tessa took a seat. She didn't need to ask how he knew where her thoughts were going. "Now, you simply must try one of these half-smokes." He glanced over at her. "It's not as though you don't have time."

No, she decided. Death knew. Death always knew. He was timeless, unchanging, older than the universe itself. And if he said she had time for a chili dog, she had time for a chili dog.

Perhaps they'd make it through the apocalypse, after all.

**Notes and Credits**

Hi! You've either made it through "The Righteous Man in the Shallow Grave", or you've skipped straight to the notes. Or you're not sure what you're doing here at all. Either way, welcome. I like to take a little time at the end of my big bangs for a quick bit of thanking and babbling.

First and foremost, I must thank my wonderful artist, , who made the amazing banners, icons, and posters that go along with this fic. If you haven't already, do take the time to check out [her art post](http://lightthesparks.livejournal.com/73238.html) and let her know how awesome she is!

Second, thanks must go out to the mod crew, , , and for setting up and organizing the challenge. I can't even begin to imagine how much work goes into these things each year. They're absolutely fabulous.

And lastly but just as importantly, my betas, and , and who wasn't really a _beta_ per se, but helped out _loads_ through out the writing process. Without any of these folks, this fic would not be what it is.

As for notes . . . well, I must say, this story was the first thing that popped into my head as I marathoned through five seasons of _Bones_ last spring. I knew it would have to get written out somewhere, and seemed like just the place to do it!

Next year, though, I'm so picking _one_ big bang to do. This whole two concurrent long fics things did bad things to my fic brain.


End file.
